DE QUINCEY'S WEITINGS. 



It is the intention of the Publishers to issue, at intervals, a 
complete collection of Mr. De Quincey's Writings, uniform 
with this volume. 



CONFESSIONS 



OF AN 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 



AND 



SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS, 



BY 



THOMAS DE dUIN.CEY. 



BOSTON: 
TICK NOR, REED, AND FIELDS. 

MDCCCL. 









BOSTON: 

THURSTON, TORRY & COMPANY, PRINTERS, 
DEVONSHIRE STREET. 






/#/ 



CONFESSIONS 



AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 



BEING AN 



EXTRACT FROM THE LIFE OF A SCHOLAR. 



FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 

I here present you, courteous reader, with 
the record of a remarkable period of my life ; 
according to my application of it, I trust that it 
will prove, not merely an interesting record, but, 
in a considerable degree, useful and instructive. 
In that hope it is, that I have drawn it up j and 
that must be my apology for breaking through 
that delicate and honorable reserve, which, for 
the most part, restrains us from the public expos- 
ure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, 
indeed, is more revolting to English feelings, 
than the spectacle of a human being obtruding 
on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tear- 
ing away that " decent drapery," which time, or 
indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn 
over them : accordingly, the greater part of our 
confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judi- 
cial confessions) proceed from demireps, adven- 



Vlll FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 

turers, or swindlers ; and for any such acts of 
gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can 
be supposed in sympathy with the decent and 
self-respecting part of society, we must look to 
French literature, or to that part of the German, 
which is tainted with the spurious and defective 
sensibility of the French. All this I feel so 
forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach 
of this tendency, that I have for many months 
hesitated about the propriety of allowing this, or 
any part of my narrative, to come before the 
public eye, until after my death (when, for many 
reasons, the whole will be published) : and it is 
not without an anxious review of the reasons, 
for and against this step, that I have, at last, 
concluded on taking it. 

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, 
from public notice : they court privacy and sol- 
itude ; and, even in their choice of a grave, will 
sometimes sequester themselves from the general 
population of the church-yard, as if declining to 
claim fellowship with the great family of man, 
and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. 
Wordsworth) 

Humbly to express 

A penitential loneliness. 

It is well, upon the whole, and for- the interest 
of us all, that it should be so ; nor would I will- 
ingly, in my own person, manifest a disregard of 



FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. IX 

such salutary feelings ; nor in act or word do any 
thing to weaken them. But, on the one hand, 
as my self-accusation does not amount to a con- 
fession of guilt, so on the other, it is possible 
that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others, 
from the record of an experience purchased at so 
heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast over- 
balance, for any violence done to the feelings 
I have noticed, and justify a breach of the gen- 
eral rule. Infirmity and misery do not, of ne- 
cessity, imply guilt. They approach, or recede 
from, the shades of that dark alliance, in propor- 
tion to the probable motives and prospects of the 
offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of 
the offence ; in proportion as the temptations to 
it were potent from the first, and the resistance 
to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. 
For my own part, without breach of truth or 
modesty, I may affirm, that my life has been, on 
the whole, the life of a philosopher : from my 
birth I was made an intellectual creature ; and 
intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and 
pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy 
days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, 
and if I am bound to confess that I have in- 
dulged in it to an excess, not yet recorded * of 

* " Not yet recorded,'''' I say; for there is one celebrated 
man of the present day, who, if all be true which is reported 
of him, has greatly exceeded me in quantity. 



X FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 

any other man, it is no less true, that 1 have 
struggled against this fascinating enthralment 
with a religious zeal, and have at length accom- 
plished what I never yet heard attributed to any 
other man — have untwisted, almost to its final 
links, the accursed chain which fettered me. 
Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off 
in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self- 
indulgence. Not to insist, that, in my case, the 
self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indul- 
gence open to doubts of casuistry, according as 
that name shall be extended to acts aiming at 
the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted 
to such as aim at the excitement of positive 
pleasure. 

Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge ; and, 
if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve 
on the present act of confession, in consideration 
of the service which I may thereby render to the 
whole class of opium-eaters. But who are they ? 
Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous 
class indeed. Of this I became convinced some 
years ago, by computing at that time, the num- 
ber of those in one small class of English society 
(the class of men distinguished for talent, or of 
eminent station) who were known to me, directly 
or indirectly, as opium-eaters ; such, for instance, 

as the eloquent and benevolent , the late 

dean of ; Lord ; Mr. , the philo- 



FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. XI 

sopher ; a late under-secretary of state (who 
described to me the sensation which first drove 
him to the use of opium, in the very same words 

as the dean of , viz., " that he felt as though 

rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his 

stomach ; ") Mr. ; and many others, hardly 

less known, whom it would be tedious to men- 
tion. Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, 
could furnish so many scores of cases, (and that 
within the knowledge of one single inquirer,) it 
was a natural inference, that the entire popula- 
tion of England would furnish a proportionable 
number. The soundness of this inference, how- 
ever, I doubted, until some facts became known 
to me, which satisfied me, that it was not incor- 
rect. I will mention two : 1. Three respectable 
London druggists, in widely remote quarters of 
London, from whom I happened lately to be 
purchasing small quantities of opium, assured 
me, that the number of amateur opium-eaters 
(as I may term them) was, at this time, im- 
mense ; and that the difficulty of distinguish- 
ing these persons, to whom habit had rendered 
opium necessary, from such as were purchasing 
it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily 
trouble and disputes. This evidence respected 
London only. But, 2. (which will possibly sur- 
prise the reader more,) some years ago, on pass- 
ing through Manchester, I was informed by 



Xll FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 

several cotton manufacturers, that their work 
people were rapidly getting into the practice of 
opium-eating ; so *nuch so, that on a Saturday 
afternoon the counters of the druggists were 
strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, 
in preparation for the known demand of the 
evening. The immediate occasion of this prac- 
tice was the lowness of wages, which, at that 
time would not allow them to indulge in ale or 
spirits ; and wages rising, it may be thought that 
this practice would cease : but, as I do not readily 
believe that any man, having once tasted the 
divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend 
to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I 
take it for granted, 

That those eat now, who never ate before ; 
And those who always ate, now eat the more. 

Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are 
admitted, even by medical writers who are its 
greatest enemies : thus, for instance, Awsiter, 
apothecary to Greenwich hospital, in his " Essay 
on the Effects of Opium/' (published in the 
year 1763,) when attempting to explain why 
Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the 
properties, counter-agents, &c, of this drug, ex- 
presses himself in the following mysterious terms, 
(ipovovTia cwsToioi :| " perhaps he thought the subject 
of too delicate a nature to be made common ; 
and as many people might then indiscriminately 



FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. Xlll 

use it, it would take from that necessary fear and 
caution, which should prevent their experiencing 
the extensive power of this drug : for there are 
many properties in it, if universally known, that 
would habituate the use, and make it more in 
request with us than the Turks themselves ; the 
result of which knowledge," he adds, " must 
prove a general misfortune." In the necessity 
of this conclusion I do not altogether concur ; 
but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak 
at the close of my Confessions, where I shall 
present the reader with the moral of my nar- 
rative. 



PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS. 



These preliminary confessions, or introductory nar- 
rative of the youthful adventures which laid the founda- 
tion of the writer's habit of opium eating in after life, 
it has been judged proper to premise, for three several 
reasons : 

1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satis- 
factory answer, which else would painfully obtrude 
itself in the course of the Opium Confessions — " How 
came any reasonable being to subject himself to such 
a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so 
servile, and knowingly to fetter himself with such a 
seven-fold chain ? " a question which, if not some- 
where plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the 
indignation which it would be apt to raise as against 
an act of wanton folly, to interfere with that degree 
of sympathy which is necessary in any case to an 
author's purposes. 

2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremen- 
dous scenery which afterwards peopled the dreams of 
the opium-eater. 

3 As creating some previous interest of a personal 
sort in the confessing subject, apart from the matter 
1 



A CONFESSIONS OF AN 

of the confessions, which cannot fail to render the 
confessions themselves more interesting. If a man 
" whose talk is of oxen," should become an opium- 
eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to 
dream at all) he will dream about oxen : whereas, 
in the case before him, the reader will find that the 
opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher ; and 
accordingly, that the phantasmagoria of his dreams 
(waking or sleeping, day dreams or night dreams) 
is suitable to one who in that character, 
Humani nihil a se alienum putat. 

For amongst the conditions which he deems indis- 
pensable to the sustaining of any claim to the title of 
philosopher, is not merely the possession of a superb 
intellect in its analytic functions (in which part of the 
pretension, however, England can for some generations 
show but few claimants ; at least, he is not aware of 
any known candidate for this honor who can be styled 
emphatically a subtle thinker, with the exception of 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in a narrower depart- 
ment of thought, with the recent illustrious exception * 

* A third exception might perhaps have been added : and my 
reason for not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only 
in his juvenile efforts that the writer whom I allude to, expressly 
addressed himself to philosophical themes; his riper powers have 
been dedicated (on very excusable and very intelligil.de grounds, 
under the present direction of the popular mind in England) to 
criticism and the fine arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt 
whether he is not rather to be considered an acute thinker than a 
subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his mastery over 
philosophical subjects, that he has obviously not had the advantage 
of a regular scholastic education: he has not read Plato in his youth, 
(which most likely was only his misfortune,) but neither has he read 
Kant in his manhood, (which is his fault.) 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 3 

of David Ricardo) — but also on such a constitution 
of the moral faculties, as shall give him an inner eye 
and power of intuition for the vision and mysteries of 
human nature : that constitution of faculties, in short, 
which (amongst all the generations of men that from 
the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it 
were, upon this planet) our English poets have pos- 
sessed in the highest degree — and Scottish * professors 
in the lowest. 

I have often been asked, how I first came to be a 
regular opium-eater ; and have suffered, very unjustly, 
in the opinion of my acquaintance, from being reputed 
to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I 
shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in 
this practice, purely for the sake of creating an artificial 
state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a 
misrepresentation of my case. True it is, that for 
nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium, for the 
sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me ; but, so long 
as I took it with this view, I was effectually protected 
from all material bad consequences, by the necessity of 
interposing long intervals between the several acts of 
indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensa- 
tions. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, 
but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that 
I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. 
In the twenty-eighth year of my age, a most painful 
affection of the stomach, which 1 had first experienced 
about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. 
This affection had originally been caused by the extre- 

* I disclaim any allusion to existing professors, of whom indeed I 
know only one. 



4 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

mities of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During 
the season of hope and redundant happiness which 
succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had 
slumbered : for the three following years it had revived 
at intervals ; and now, under unfavorable circumstan- 
ces, from depression of spirits, it attacked me with 
violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. As 
the youthful sufferings, which first produced this de- 
rangement of the stomach, were interesting in them- 
selves and in the circumstances that attended them, I 
shall here briefly retrace them. 

My father died when I was about seven years old, 
and left me to the care of four guardians. I was sent 
to various schools, great and small ; and was very early 
distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for 
my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek 
with ease ; and at fifteen my command of that language 
was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in 
lyric metres, but would converse in Greek fluently, and 
without embarrassment — an accomplishment which I 
have not since met with in any scholar of my times, 
and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of 
daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I 
could furnish extempore ; for the necessity of ransacking 
my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations 
of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern 
ideas, images, relations of things, dec, gave me a com- 
pass of diction which would never have been called out 
by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. " That 
boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of 
a stranger to me, " that boy could harangue an Athenian 
mob, better than you or I could address an English 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 5 

one.", He who honored me with this eulogy was a 
scholar, " and a ripe and good one," and of all my 
tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. 
Unfortunately for me, (and, as I afterwards learned, to 
this worthy man's great indignation,) I was transferred 
to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual 
panic lest I should expose his ignorance ; and finally, 
to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great 
school on an ancient foundation. This man had been 

appointed to his situation by College, Oxford ; and 

was a sound, well built scholar, but (like most men, 
whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, 
and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in 
my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favorite 
master; and besides, he could not disguise from my 
hourly notice, the poverty and meagreness of his under- 
standing. It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and know 
himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or 
in power of mind. This was the case, so far as 
regarded knowledge at least, not with myself only ; for 
the two boys, who jointly with myself composed the 
first form, were better Grecians than the head-master, 
though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more 
accustomed to sacrifice to the graces. When I first 
entered, I remember that we read Sophocles; and it 
was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned 
triumvirate of the first form, to see our " Archididas- 
calus" (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson 
before we went up, and laying a regular train, with 
lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as 
it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses ; 
whilst we never condescended to open our books, until 



t) CONFESSIONS OF AN 

the moment of going up, and were generally employed 
in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such impor- 
tant matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and 
dependent, for their future prospects at the university, 
on the recommendation of the head-master ; but I, who 
had a small patrimonial property, the income of which 
was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be 
sent thither immediately. I m de earnest representa- 
tions on the subject to my guardians, but all to no 
purpose. One, who was more reasonable, and had 
more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at a 
distance ; two of the other three resigned all their 
authority into the hands of the fourth ; and this fourth 
with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his 
way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposi- 
tion to his will. After a certain number of letters and 
personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope 
for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my 
guardian : unconditional submission was what he de- 
manded ; and I prepared myself, therefore, for other 
measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty 
steps, and my seventeenth birth-day was fast approach- 
ing ; after which day I had sworn within myself, that I 
would no longer be numbered amongst school-boys. 
Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman 
of high rank, who, though young herself, had known 
me from a child, and had latterly treated me with great 
distinction, requesting that she would " lend " me five 
guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came ; 
and I was beginning to despond, when, at length, a 
servant put into my hands a double letter, with a 
coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging ; 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 7 

the fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way 
the delay had arisen ; she inclosed double of what I 
had asked, and good-naturedly hinted, that if I should 
never repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now 
then, I was prepared for my scheme : ten guineas, 
added to about two that I had remaining from my pocket 
money, seemed to me sufficient for an indefinite length 
of time ; and at that happy age, if no definite boundary 
can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and 
pleasure makes it virtually infinite. 

It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and what cannot 
often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one,) 
that we never do any thing consciously for the last 
time, (of things, that is, which we have long been in 
the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This 

truth I felt deeply, when I came to leave , a place 

which I did not love, and where I had not been happy. 

On the evening before I left for ever, I grieved 

when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with 
the evening service, performed for the last time in my 
hearing ; and at night, when the muster-roll of names 
was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first, 
I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who 
was standing by, I bowed to him, and looking earnestly 
in his face, thinking to myself, " He is old and infirm, 
and in this world I shall not see him again." I was 
right ; I never did see him again, nor never shall. 
He looked at me complacently, smiled good naturedly, 
returned my salutation, (or rather, my valediction,) and 
we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could 
not reverence him intellectually ; but he had been 
uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me many indul- 



8 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

gences ; and I grieved at the thought of the mortifica- 
tion I should inflict upon him. 

The morning came, which was to launch me into the 
world, and from which my whole succeeding life has, 
in many important points, taken its coloring. I lodged 
in the head-master's house, and had been allowed, from 
my first entrance, the indulgence of a private room, 
which I used both as a sleeping room and as a study. 
At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion 

at the ancient towers of , " drest in earliest light," 

and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a 
cloudless July morning. I was firm and immovable in 
my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of uncer- 
tain danger and troubles ; and if I could have foreseen 
the hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of affliction which 
soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. 
To this agitation the deep peace of the morning pre- 
sented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a 
medicine. The silence was more profound than that 
of midnight : and to me the silence of a summer morn- 
ing is more touching than all other silence, because, the 
light being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at 
other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from per- 
fect day, chiefly because man is not yet abroad ; and 
thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures 
of God, seems to be secure and deep, only so long as 
the presence of man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, 
are not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed mj^self, 
took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the 
room. For the last year and a half this room had been 
my " pensive citadel : " here I had read and studied 
through all the hours of night ; and, though true it was, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 9 

that for the latter part of this time I, who was framed 
for love and gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and 
happiness, during the strife and fever of contention 
with my guardian ; yet, on the other hand, as a boy, so 
passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual 
pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy 
hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as I 
looked round on the chair, hearth, writing-table, and 
other familiar objects, knowing too certainly that I 
looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write 
this, it is eighteen years ago ; and yet, at this moment, I 
see distinctly, as if it were but yesterday, the lineaments 
and expressions of the object on which I fixed my parting 

gaze : it was a picture of the lovely , which hung 

over the mantelpiece ; the eyes and mouth of which 
were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so radiant 
with benignity and divine tranquillity, that I had a 
thousand times laid down my pen, or my book, to 
gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron 
saint. Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, the deep tones 

of clock proclaimed that it was four o'clock. I 

went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked 
out, and closed the door for ever ! 

So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions 
of laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recall, without 
smiling, an incident which occurred at that time, and 
which had nearly put a stop to the immediate execution 
of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight ; for, 
besides my clothes, it contained nearly all my library. 
The difficulty was to get this removed to a carrier's : 
my room was at an aerial elevation in the house, and 



10 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

(what was worse) the staircase, which communicated 
with this angle of the building, was accessible only by 
a gallery, which passed the head-master's chamber- 
door. I was a favorite with all the servants ; and, 
knowing that any of them would screen me, and act 
confidentially, I communicated my embarrassment to a 
groom of the head-master's. The groom swore he 
would do any thing I wished ; and, when the time 
arrived, went up stairs to bring the trunk down. This 
I feared was beyond the strength of any one man : 
however, the groom was a man — 

Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies; 

and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plains. Ac- 
cordingly he persisted in bringing down the trunk 
alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of the last 
flight, in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard 
him descending with slow and firm steps : but, unfor- 
tunately, from his trepidation, as he drew near the 
dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery, 
his foot slipped ; and the mighty burden falling from 
his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each 
step of the descent, that on reaching the bottom, it 
trundled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noise 
of twenty devils, against the very bed-room door of the 
archididascalus. My first thought was, that all was lost ; 
and that my only chance for executing a retreat was 
to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflection, I 
determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the 
utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine : 
but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the 
ludicrous, in this unhappy contretems, taken possession 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 11 

of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud and canorous 
peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven 
Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, 
within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not 
forbear joining in it ; subdued to this, not so much by 
the unhappy etourderie of the trunk, as by the effect it 
had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter 

of course, that Dr. would sally out of his room : 

for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out 
like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say, how- 
ever, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had 
ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be heard 

in the bed-room. Dr. had a painful complaint, 

which, sometimes keeping him awake, made him sleep, 
perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering 
courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden 
again, and accomplished the remainder of his descent 
without accident. I waited until I saw the trunk placed 
on a wheelbarrow, and on its road to the carrier's : then 
" with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, carry- 
ing a small parcel, with some articles of dress under 
my arm : a favorite English poet in one pocket ; and a 
small 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of 
Euripides, in the other. 

It had been my intention originally to proceed to 
Westmoreland, both from the love I bore to that county, 
and on other personal accounts. Accident, however, 
gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent 
my steps towards North Wales. 

After wandering about for some time in Denbigh- 
shire, Merionethshire, and Caernarvonshire, I took 
lodgings in a small neat house in B . Here I might 



12 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

have staid with great comfort for many weeks ; for 

provisions were cheap at B , from the scarcity of 

other markets for the surplus produce of a wide agri- 
cultural district. An accident, however, in which, 
perhaps, no offence was designed, drove me out to 
wander again. I know not whether my reader may 
have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the 
proudest class of people in England (or at any rate, 
the class whose pride is most apparent) are the families 
of bishops. Noblemen, and their children, carry about 
with them, in their very titles, a sufficient notification 
of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies 
also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, 
to the English ear, adequate exponents of high birth, or 
descent. Sackville, Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Caven- 
dish, and scores of others, tell their own tale. Such 
persons, therefore, find every where a due sense of 
their claims already established, except among those 
who are ignorant of the world, by virtue of their own 
obscurity ; " Not to know them argues one's self un- 
known." Their manners take a suitable tone and 
coloring; and, for once that they find it necessary to 
impress a sense of their consequence upon others, they 
meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and 
tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension. 
With the families of bishops it is otherwise ; with them 
it is all up-hill work, to make known their pretensions ; 
for the proportion of the episcopal bench, taken from 
noble families, is not at any time very large ; and the 
succession to these dignities is so rapid, that the public 
ear seldom has time to become familiar with them, 
unless where they are connected with some literary 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 13 

reputation. Hence it is, that the children of bishops 
carry about with them an austere and repulsive air, 
indicative of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort 
of noli me tangcre manner, nervously apprehensive of 
too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitive- 
ness of a gouty man, from all contact with the 01 noMoi. 
Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual good- 
ness of nature, will preserve a man from such weakness ; 
but, in general, the truth of my representation will be 
acknowledged ; pride, if not of deeper root in such 
families, appears, at least, more upon the surface of their 
manners. This spirit of manners naturally communi- 
cates itself to their domestics, and other dependents. 
Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid, or a nurse, 

in the family of the Bishop of ; and had but lately 

married away and " settled " (as such people express 

it) for life. In a little town like B , merely to have 

lived in the bishop's family conferred some distinction ; 
and my good landlady had rather more than her share 
of the pride I have noticed on that score. What " my 
lord" said, and what "my lord" did, how useful he 
was in parliament, and how indispensable at Oxford, 
formed the daily burden of her talk. All this I bore 
very well ; for I was too good-natured to laugh in m\y 
body's face, and I could make an ample allowance for 
the garrulity of an old servant. Of necessity, however, 
I must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately 
impressed with the bishop's importance ; and, perhaps, 
to punish me for my indifference, or possibly by ac- 
cident, she one day repeated to me a conversation in 
which I was indirectly a party concerned. She had 
been to the palace to pay her respects to the family ; 






14 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

and, dinner being over, was summoned into the dining- 
room. In giving an account of her household economy, 
she happened to mention that she had let her apart- 
ments. Thereupon the good bishop (it seemed) had 
taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of 
inmates ; " for," said he, " you must recollect, Betty, 
that this place is in the high road to the Head ; so that 
multitudes of Irish swindlers, running away from their 
debts into England, and of English swindlers, running 
away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to 
take this place in their route." This advice was cer- 
tainly not without reasonable grounds, but rather fitted 
to be stored up for Mrs. Betty's private meditations, 
than specially reported to me. What followed, how- 
ever, was somewhat worse : — " Oh, my lord," answered 
my landlady (according to her own representation of 
the matter) " I really don't think this young gentleman 

is a swindler ; because ;" " You don't think me a 

swindler? " said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of in- 
dignation ; " for the future, I shall spare you the trouble 
of thinking about it." And without delay I prepared 
for my departure. Some concessions the good woman 
seemed disposed to make ; but a harsh and contemptu- 
ous expression, which I fear that I applied to the learned 
dignitary himself, roused her indignation in turn ; and 
reconciliation then became impossible. 1 was, indeed, 
greatly irritated at the bishop's having suggested any 
grounds of suspicion, however remotely, against a person 
whom he had never seen ; and I thought of letting him 
know my mind in Greek ; which, at the same time 
that it would furnish some presumption that I was no 
swindler, would also (I hoped) compel the bishop to 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 15 

reply in the same language ; in which case, I doubted 
not to make it appear, that if I was not so rich as his 
lordship, I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, 
however, drove this boyish design out of my mind ; for 
I considered, that the bishop was in the right to counsel 
an old servant ; that he could not have designed that 
his advice should be reported to me ; and that the same 
coarseness of mind, which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat 
the advice at all, might have colored it in a way more 
agreeable to her own style of thinking, than to the actual 
expressions of the worthy bishop. 

I left the lodging the very same hour ; and this turned 
out a very unfortunate occurrence for me ; because, 
living henceforward at inns, I was drained of my money 
very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to short 
allowance ; that is, I could allow myself only one meal 
a day. From the keen appetite produced by constant 
exercise and mountain air, acting on a youthful stomach, 
I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender regimen ; 
for the single meal, which I could venture to order, was 
coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length with- 
drawn ; and afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, 
I subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, &c, or on 
the casual hospitalities which I now and then received, 
in return for such little services as I had an opportunity 
of rendering. Sometimes I wrote letters of business 
for cottagers, who happened to have relatives in Liver- 
pool or in London ; more often I wrote love-letters to 
their sweethearts for young women who had lived as 
servants in Shrewsbury, or other towns on the English 
border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfaction 
to my humble friends, and was generally treated with 



16 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

hospitality ; and once, in particular, near the village of 
Llan-y-styndvvr, (or some such name,) in a sequestered 
part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards 
of three days by a family of young people, with an 
affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impres- 
sion upon my heart not yet impaired. The family con- 
sisted, at that time, of four sisters and three brothers, all 
grown up, and remarkable for elegance and delicacy of 
manners. So much beauty, and so much native good 
breeding and refinement, I do not remember to have 
seen before or since in any cottage, except once or 
twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke 
English ; an accomplishment not often met with in so 
many members of one family, especially in villages 
remote from the high road. Here I wrote, on my first 
introduction, a letter about prize money, for one of the 
brothers, who had served on board an English man of 
war ; and more privately, two love-letters for two of the 
sisters. They were both interesting looking girls, and 
one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of their 
confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving 
me general instructions, it did not require any great 
penetration to discover that what they wished was, that 
their letters should be as kind as was consistent with 
proper maidenly pride. I contrived so to temper my 
expressions, as to reconcile the gratification of both 
feelings ; and they were much pleased with the way in 
which 1 had expressed their thoughts, as (in their sim- 
plicity) they were astonished at my having so readily 
discovered them. The reception one meets with from 
the women of a family, generally determines the tenor 
of one's whole entertainment. In this case I had dis- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 17 

charged my confidential duties as secretary, so much 
to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them 
with my conversation, that I was pressed to stay with a 
cordiality which I had little inclination to resist. I slept 
with the brothers, the only unoccupied bed standing in 
the apartment of the young women : but in all other 
points, they treated me with a respect not usually paid 
to purees as light as mine ; as if my scholarship were 
sufficient evidence, that I was of " gentle blood." Thus 
I lived with them for three days, and great part of a 
fourth; and, from the undiminished kindness which they 
continued to show me, I believe I might have staid with 
them up to this time, if their power had corresponded 
with their wishes. On the last morning, however, I 
perceived upon their countenances, as they sate at 
breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant communi- 
cation which was at hand ; and soon after one of the 
brothers explained to me, that their parents had gone, 
the day before my arrival, to an annual meeting of 
Methodists, held, at Caernarvon, and were that day 
expected to return ; " and if they should not be so civil 
as they ought to be," he begged, on the part of all the 
young people, that I would not take it amiss. The 
parents returned with churlish faces, and " Dym Sas- 
senach" (no English) in answer to all my addresses. I 
saw how matters stood ; and so, taking an affectionate 
leave of my kind and interesting young hosts, I went 
my way. For, though they spoke warmly to their 
parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner of 
the old people, by saying, that it was " only their way," 
yet I easily understood that my talent for writing love- 
letters would do as little to recommend me with two 



18 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists, as my Greek 
Sapphics or Alcaics ; and what had been hospitality, 
when offered to me with the gracious courtesy of my 
young friends, would become charity, when connected 
with the harsh demeanor of these old people. Cer- 
tainly, Mr. Shelley is right in his notions about old 
age ; unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts of 
opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and 
blighter to the genial charities of the human heart. 

Soon after this, I contrived, by means which I must 
omit for want of room, to transfer myself to London. 
And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long 
sufferings ; without using a disproportionate expression 
I might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for 
upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of 
hunger in various degrees of intensity ; but as bitter, 
perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered 
who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my 
reader's feelings by a detail of all that I endured ; for 
extremities such as these, under any circumstances of 
heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, 
even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful 
to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it 
suffice, at least on this occasion, to say, that a few 
fragments of bread from the breakfast-table of one 
individual, (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know 
of my being in utter want,) and these at uncertain 
intervals, constituted my whole support. During the 
former part of my sufferings (that, is, generally in 
Wales, and always for the first two months in London) 
I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. 
To this constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 19 

mainly, that I did not sink under my torments. Latterly, 
however, when cold and more inclement weather came 
on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had 
begun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was, 
no doubt, fortunate for me, that the same person to 
whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep 
in a large unoccupied house, of which he was tenant. 
Unoccupied, I call it, for there was no household or 
establishment in it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a 
table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking pos- 
session of my new quarters, that the house already 
contained one single inmate, a poor, friendless child, 
apparently ten years old ; but she seemed hunger- 
bitten ; and sufferings of that sort often make children 
look older than they are. From this forlorn child I 
learned, that she had slept and lived there alone, for 
some time before I came ; and great joy the poor crea- 
ture expressed, when she found that I was, in future, to 
be her companion through the hours of darkness. The 
house was large ; and, from the want of furniture, the 
noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the 
spacious staircase and hall ; and, amidst the real fleshly 
ills of cold, and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had 
found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the 
self-created one of ghosts. I promised her protection 
against all ghosts whatsoever ; but, alas ! I could offer 
her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a 
bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow ; but with no 
other covering than a sort of large horseman's cloak ; 
afterwards, however, we discovered, in a garret, an old 
sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of 
other articles, which added a little to our warmth. The 



20 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

poor child crept close to me for warmth, and for security 
against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more 
than usually ill, I took her into my arms, so that, in 
general, she was tolerably warm, and often slept when 
I could not ; for, during the last two months of my 
sufferings, I slept much in the daytime, and was apt to 
fall into transient dozings at all hours. But my sleep 
distressed me more than my watching ; for, besides the 
tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only not so 
awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter 
as produced by opium,) my sleep was never more than 
what is called dog-sleep ; so that I could hear myself 
moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened 
suddenly by my own voice ; and, about this time, a 
hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell 
into a slumber, which has since returned upon me, at 
different periods of my life, viz. a sort of twitching (I 
know not where, but apparently about the region of the 
stomach,) which compelled me violently to throw out 
my feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation 
coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to 
relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only 
from exhaustion ; and from increasing weakness (as I 
said before) 1 was constantly falling asleep, and con- 
stantly awaking. Meantime, the master of the house 
sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early, 
sometimes not till ten o'clock, sometimes not at all. 
He was in constant fear of bailiffs ; improving on 
the plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a 
different quarter of London ; and I observed that 
he never failed to examine, through a private window, 
the appearance of those who knocked at the door, 
before he would allow it to be opened. He break- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 21 

fasted alone ; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly 
have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a 
second person, any more than the quantity of esculent 
material which, for the most part, was little more than 
a roll, or a few biscuits, which he had bought on his 
road from the place where he had slept. Or, if he 
had asked a party, as I once learnedly and facetiously 
observed to him, the several members of it must have 
stood in the relation to each other (not sate in any rela- 
tion whatever) of succession, as the metaphysicians 
have it, and not of co-existence ; in the relation of the 
parts of time, and not of the parts of space. During 
his breakfast, I generally contrived a reason for loung- 
ing in ; and, with an air of as much indifference as I 
could assume, took up such fragments as he had left — 
sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing 
this, I committed no robbery except upon the man him- 
self, who was thus obliged, (I believe,) now and then to 
send out at noon for an extra biscuit ; for, as to the 
poor child, she was never admitted into his study (if I 
may give that name to his chief depository of parch- 
ments, law writings, &c. ;) that room was to her the 
Blue-beard room of the house, being regularly locked 
on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which 
usually was his final departure for the night. Whether 

this child were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. , or 

only a servant, I could not ascertain ; she did not her- 
self know ; but certainly she was treated altogether as 

a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. make his 

appearance than she went below stairs, brushed his 
shoes, coat, &c. ; and, except when she was summoned 
to run an errand, she never emerged from the dismal 



22 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

Tartarus of the kitchens, to the upper air, until my 
welcome knock at night called up her little trembling 
footsteps to the front door. Of her life during the day- 
time, however, I knew but little but what I gathered 
from her own account at night ; for, as soon as the 
hours of business commenced, I saw that my absence 
would be acceptable ; and, in general, therefore, I went 
off and sate in the parks, or elsewhere, until night-fall. 
But who, and what, meantime, was the master of the 
house himself? Reader, he was one of those anom- 
alous practitioners in lower departments of the law, who 
— what shall I say ? — who on prudential reasons, or 
from necessity, deny themselves all the indulgence in 
the luxury of too delicate a conscience ; (a periphrasis 
which might be abridged considerably, but that I leave 
to the reader's taste ;) in many walks of life, a con- 
science is a more expensive incumbrance than a wife 
or a carriage ; and just as people talk of " laying down" 

their carriages, so I suppose my friend, Mr. , had 

" laid down " his conscience for a time ; meaning, doubt- 
less, to resume it as soon as he could afford it. The 
inner economy of such a man's daily life would present 
a most strange picture, if I could allow myself to amuse 
the reader at his expense. Even with my limited 
opportunities for observing what went on, I saw many 
scenes of London intrigues, and complex chicanery, 
" cycle and epicyle, orb in orb," at which I sometimes 
smile to this day, and at which I smiled then, in spite 
of my misery. My situation, however, at that time, 
gave me little experience, in my own person, of any 

qualities in Mr. 's character but such as did him 

honor ; and of his whole strange composition, I must 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 23 

forget every thing but that towards me he was obliging, 
and, to the extent of his power, generous. 

That power was not, indeed, very extensive ; how- 
ever, in common with the rats, I sate rent free ; and, as 
Dr. Johnson has recorded, that he never but once in his 
life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so let me 
be grateful, that on that single occasion I had as large 
a choice of apartments in a London mansion as I could 
possibly desire. Except the Blue-beard room, which 
the poor child believed to be haunted, all others, from 
the attics to the cellars, were at our service ; " the 
world was all before us ;" and we pitched our tent for 
the night in any spot we chose. This house I have 
already described as a large one ; it stands in a con- 
spicuous situation, and in a well known part of London. 
Many of my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, 
within a few hours of reading this. For myself, I 
never fail to visit it when business draws me to Lon- 
don ; about ten o'clock this very night, August 15, 
18*21, being my birth-day, I turned aside from my 
evening walk, down Oxford Street, purposely to take a 
glance at it : it is now occupied by a respectable fam- 
ily ; and, by the lights in the front drawing-room, I 
observed a domestic party, assembled perhaps at tea, 
and apparently cheerful and gay. Marvellous contrast 
in my eyes to the darkness, cold, silence, and deso- 
lation of that same house eighteen years ago, when 
its nightly occupants were one famishing scholar, and a 
neglected child. Her, by-the-by, in after years, I vain- 
ly endeavored to trace. Apart from her situation, she 
was not what would be called an interesting child : she 
was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor 



24 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

remarkably pleasing in manners. But, thank God ! 
even in those years I needed not the embellishments of 
novel accessaries to conciliate my affections ; plain hu- 
man nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, 
was enough for me ; and I loved the child because she 
was my partner in wretchedness. If she is now living, 
she is probably a mother, with children of her own ; 
but, as I have said, I could never trace her. 

This I regret : but another person there was at that 
time, whom I have since sought to trace with far deeper 
earnestness, and with far deeper sorrow at my failure. 
This person was a young woman, and one of that un- 
happy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. 
I feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avow- 
ing, that I was then on familiar and friendly terms with 
many women in that unfortunate condition. The read- 
er needs neither smile at this avowal, nor frown. For, 
not to remind my classical readers of the old Latin 
proverb, " Sine Cerere" &c, it may well be sup- 
posed that in the existing state of my purse, my con- 
nection with such women could not have been an impure 
one. But the truth is, that at no time of my life 
have I been a person to hold myself polluted by the 
touch or approach of any creature that wore a human 
shape : on the contrary, from my very earliest youth, it 
has been my pride to converse familiarly, more Socrat- 
ico, with all human beings, man, woman, and child, 
that chance might fling in my way : a practice which 
is friendly to the knowledge of human nature, to good 
feelings, and to that frankness of address which becomes 
a man who would be thought a philosopher. For a 
philosopher should not see with the eyes of the poor 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 25 

limitary creature calling himself a man of the world, 
and filled with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of 
birth and education, but should look upon himself as a 
Catholic creature, and as standing in an equal relation 
to high and low, to educated and uneducated, to the 
guilty and the innocent. Being myself at that time of 
necessity a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I natu- 
rally fell in more frequently with those female peripa- 
tetics, who are technically called street-walkers. Many 
of these women had occasionally taken my part against 
watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps of 
houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them, 
the one on whose account I have at all introduced this 
subject — yet no ! let me not class thee, oh noble 

minded Ann , with that order of women ; let me 

find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate 
the condition of her to whose bounty and compassion, 
ministering to my necessities when all the world had 
forsaken me, I owe it that I am at this time alive. 
For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor, 
friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested 
with her on steps and under the shelter of porticos. 
She could not be so old as myself: she told me, in- 
deed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year. 
By such questions as my interest about her prompted, 
I had gradually drawn forth her simple history. Her's 
was a case of ordinary occurrence, (as I have since had 
reason to think,) and one in which, if London benefi- 
cence had better adapted its arrangements to meet it, 
the power of the law might oftener be interposed to 
protect, and to avenge. But the stream of London 
charity flows in a channel which, though deep and 



26 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

mighty, is yet noiseless and under ground ; not ob- 
vious or readily accessible to poor, houseless wanderers ; 
and it cannot be denied that the outside air and frame- 
work of London society is harsh, cruel and repulsive. 
In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries 
might easily have been redressed ; and I urged her 
often and earnestly to lay her complaint before a magis- 
trate : friendless as she was, I assured her that she 
would meet with immediate attention; and that English 
justice, which was no respecter of persons, would 
speedily and amply avenge her on the brutal ruffian 
who had plundered her little property. She promised 
me often that she would ; but she delayed taking the 
steps I pointed out, from time to time ; for she was 
timid and dejected to a degree which showed how deep- 
ly sorrow had taken hold of her young heart ; and per- 
haps she thought justly that the most upright judge, 
and the most righteous tribunals, could do nothing to 
repair her heaviest wrongs. Something, however, 
would perhaps have been done ; for it had been settled 
between us at length, but unhappily on the very last 
time but one that I was ever to see her, that in a day 
or two we should speak on her behalf. This little ser- 
vice it was destined, however, that I should never real- 
ize. Meantime, that which she rendered to me, and 
which was greater than I could ever have repaid her, 
was this : — One night, when we were pacing slowly 
along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt 
unusually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off 
with me into Soho Square. Thither we went ; and 
we sate down on the steps of a house, which, to this 
hour, I never pass without a pang of grief, and an inner 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 27 

act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in 
memory of the noble act which she there performed. 
Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse : I had been 
leaning my head against her bosom ; and all at once I 
sank from her arms and fell backwards on the steps. 
From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner convic- 
tion of the liveliest kind, that without some powerful and 
reviving stimulus, I should either have died on the spot, 
or should at least have sunk to a point of exhaustion 
from which all reascent, under my friendless circum- 
stances, would soon have become hopeless. Then it 
was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan com- 
panion, who had herself met with little but injuries in 
this world, stretched out a saving hand to me. Utter- 
ing a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay, she 
ran off into Oxford Street, and in less time than could 
be imagined, returned to me with a glass of port wine 
and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach (which at 
that time would have rejected all solid food) with an 
instantaneous power of restoration ; and for this glass 
the generous girl without a murmur paid out of her 
own humble purse, at a time, be it remembered ! 
when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the 
bare necessaries of life, and when she could have no 
reason to expect that I should ever be able to reim- 
burse her. Oh ! youthful benefactress ! how often in 
succeeding years, standing in solitary places, and think- 
ing of thee with grief of heart and perfect love, how 
often have I wished that, as in ancient times the curse 
of a father was believed to have a supernatural power, 
and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self- 
fulfilment, — even so the benediction of a heart op- 



28 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

pressed with gratitude, might have a like prerogative ; 
might have power given to it from above to chase, to 
haunt, to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into 
the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it 
were possible) into the darkness of the grave, there 
to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace 
and forgiveness, and of final reconciliation ! 

I do not often weep : for not only do my thoughts on 
subjects connected with the chief interests of man daily, 
nay hourly, descend a thousand fathoms " too deep for 
tears ;" not only does the sternness of my habits of 
thought present an antagonism to the feelings which 
prompt tears — wanting of necessity to those who, 
being protected usually by their levity from any tenden- 
cy to meditative sorrow, would by that same levity be 
made incapable of resisting it on any casual access of 
such feelings ; but also, I believe, that all minds 
which have contemplated such objects as deeply as I 
have done, must, for their own protection from utter 
despondency, have early encouraged and cherished 
some tranquillizing belief as to the future balances and 
the hieroglyphic meanings of human sufferings. On 
these accounts, I am cheerful to this hour ; and, as I 
have said, I do not often weep. Yet some feelings, 
though not deeper or more passionate, are more tender 
than others ; and often, when I walk at this time in 
Oxford Street, by dreamy lamp-light, and hear those 
airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced 
me and my dear companion, (as I must always call 
her,) I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mys- 
terious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically 
separated us for ever. How it happened, the reader 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 29 

will understand from what remains of this introductory 
narration. 

Soon after the period of the last incident I have 
recorded, I met, in Albemarle Street, a gentleman of 
his late Majesty's household. This gentleman had 
received hospitalities, on different occasions, from my 
family; and he challenged me upon the strength of 
my family likeness. I did not attempt any disguise ; 
I answered his questions ingenuously, and, on his 
pledging his word of honor that he would not betray 
me to my guardians, I gave him an address to my 
friend the attorney. The next day I received from 
him a ilO bank note. The letter inclosing it was 
delivered with other letters of business to the attorney ; 
but, though his look and manner informed me that he 
suspected its contents, he gave it up to me honorably 
and without demur. 

This present, from the particular service to which it 
was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose 
which had allured me up to London, and which I had 
been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first 
day of my arrival in London, to that of my final de- 
parture. 

In so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my 
readers that I should not have found some means of 
staving off the last extremities of penury ; and it will 
strike them that two resources at least must have been 



open to me, viz. either to seek assistance from the 
friends of my family, or to turn my youthful talents 
and attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolu- 
ment. As to the first course, I may observe, generally, 
that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the 



30 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

chance of being reclaimed by my guardians ; not doubt- 
ing that whatever power the law gave them would have 
been enforced against me to the utmost; that is, to the 
extremity of forcibly restoring me to the school which 
I had quitted ; a restoration which, as it would in my 
eyes have been a dishonor, even if submitted to volun- 
tarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in con- 
tempt and defiance of my own wishes and efforts, to 
have been a humiliation worse to me than death, and 
which would indeed have terminated in death. I was, 
therefore, shy enough of applying for assistance even 
in those quarters where I was sure of receiving it, at 
the risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue for 
recovering me. But, as to London in particular, 
though doubtless my father had in his lifetime had 
many friends there, yet (as ten years had passed since 
his death) I remembered few of them even by name; 
and never having seen London before, except once for 
a few hours, I knew not the address of even those few. 
To this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the 
difficulty, but much more the paramount fear which I 
have mentioned, habitually indisposed me. In regard 
to the other mode, I now feel half inclined to join my 
reader in wondering that I should have overlooked it. 
As a corrector of Greek proofs, (if in no other way,) I 
might doubtless have gained enough for my slender 
wants. Such an office as this I could have discharged 
with an exemplary and punctual accuracy that would 
soon have gained me the confidence of my employers. 
But it must not be forgotten that, even for such an 
office as this, it was necessary that I should first of all 
have an introduction to some respectable publisher ; 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 31 

and this I had no means of obtaining. To say the 
truth, however, it had never once occurred to me to 
think of literary labors as a source of profit. No 
mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money had ever 
occurred to me, but that of borrowing it on the strength 
of my future claims and expectations. This mode I 
sought by every avenue to compass ; and amongst 

other persons I applied to a Jew named D .* 

To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders, 

* To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, 
I applied again on the same business ; and, dating at that time from 
a respectable college, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious 
attention to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from any 
extravagance, or youthful levities, (these my habits and the nature 
of my pleasures raised me far above,) but simply from the vindictive 
malice of my guardian, who, when he found himself no longer able 
to prevent me from going to the university, had, as a parting token 
of his good nature, refused to sign an order for granting me a shil- 
ling beyond the allowance made to me at school, viz. one hundred 
pounds per annum. Upon this sum it was, in my time, barely pos- 
sible to have lived in college ; and not possible to a man who, 
though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious disregard for 
money, and without any expensive tastes, confided nevertheless 
rather too much in servants, and did not delight in the petty details 
of minute economy. I soon, therefore, became embarrassed ; and at 
length, after a most voluminous negotiation with the Jew, (some 
parts of which, if I had leisure to rehearse them, would greatly 
amuse my readers,) I was put in possession of the sum I asked for, 
on the " regular " terms of paying the Jew seventeen and a half per 
cent, by way of annuity on all the money furnished ; Israel, on his 
part, graciously resuming no more than about ninety guineas of the 
said money, on account of an attorney's bill, (for what services, to 
Avhom rendered, and when, whether at the siege of Jerusalem, at the 
building of the Second Temple, or on some earlier occasion, I have 
not yet been able to discover.) How many perches this bill meas- 
ured I really forget ; but I still keep it in a cabinet of natural curios- 
ities, and some time or other I believe I shall present it to the 
British Museum. 



32 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

(some of whom were, I believe, also Jews,) I had intro- 
duced myself with an account of my expectations ; 
which account, on examining my father's will at Doc- 
tor's Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. 

The person there mentioned as the second son of , 

was found to have all the claims (or more than all) that 
I had stated : but one question still remained, which the 
faces of the Jews pretty significantly suggested, — was 
I that person ? This doubt had never occurred to me 
as a possible one ; I had rather feared, whenever my 
Jewish friends scrutinized me keenly, that I might be 
too well known to be that person, and that some 
scheme might be passing in their minds for entrapping 
me and selling me to my guardians. It was strange to 
me to find my own self materialiler considered (so I 
expressed it, for I doated on logical accuracy of dis- 
tinctions,) accused, or at least suspected, of counterfeit- 
ing my own se\f,for?naliter considered. However, to 
satisfy their scruples, I took the only course in my 
power. Whilst I was in Wales, I had received various 
letters from young friends : these I produced — for I 
carried them constantly in my pocket — being, indeed, 
by this time, almost the only relics of my personal in- 
cumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore,) which I had 
not in one way or other disposed of. Most of these let- 
ters were from the Earl of , who was at that time 

my chief (or rather only) confidential friend. These 
letters were dated from Eton. I had also some from 

the Marquis of , his father, who, though absorbed 

in agricultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian 
himself, and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs 
to be, still retained an affection for classical studies, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 33 

and for youthful scholars. He had, accordingly, from 
the time that I was fifteen, corresponded with me ; 
sometimes upon the great improvements which he had 

made, or was meditating, in the counties of M and 

SI , since I had been there ; sometimes upon the 

merits of a Latin poet ; at other times, suggesting sub- 
jects to me on which he wished me to write verses. 

On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends 
agreed to furnish two or three hundred pounds on my 
personal security, provided I could persuade the young 
Earl, who was, by the way, not older than myself, to 
guarantee the payment on our coming of age : the 
Jew's final object being, as I now suppose, not the 
trifling profit he could expect to make by me, but the 
prospect of establishing a connection with my noble 
friend, whose immense expectations were well known 
to him. In pursuance of this proposal on the part of 
the Jew, about eight or nine days after I had received 
the c£10, I prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly £3 
of the money I had given to my money-lending friend, 
on his alleging that the stamps must be bought, in order 
that the writings might be preparing whilst I was away 
from London. I thought in my heart that he was lying ; 
but I did not wish to give him any excuse for charging 
his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I had given 
to my friend the attorney, (who was connected with 
the money-lenders as their lawyer,) to which, indeed, 
he was entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. About 
fifteen shillings I had employed in reestablishing 
(though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the re- 
mainder I gave one quarter to Ann, meaning on my 
return to have divided with her whatever might remain. 
3 



34 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

These arrangements made, soon after six o'clock, on 
a dark winter evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, 
towards Piccadilly ; for it was my intention to go down 
as far as Salt Hill on the Bath or Bristol Mail. Our 
course lay through a part of the town which has now 
all disappeared, so that I can no longer retrace its 
ancient boundaries : Swallow Street, I think it was 
called. Having time enough before us, however, we 
bore away to the left, until we came into Golden 
square : there, near the corner of Sherrard Street, we 
sat down, not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze 
of Piccadilly. I had told her of my plans some time be- 
fore : and now I assured her again that she should share 
in my good fortune, if I met with any ; and that I 
would never forsake her, as soon as I had power to pro- 
tect her. This I fully intended, as much from inclina- 
tion as from a sense of duty ; for, setting aside grati- 
tude, which in any case must have made me her debtor 
for life, I loved her as affectionately as if she had been 
my sister ; and at this moment with sevenfold tender- 
ness, from pity at witnessing her extreme dejection. I 
had, apparently, most reason for dejection, because I 
was leaving the savior of my life ; yet I, considering 
the shock my health had received, was cheerful and 
full of hope. She, on the contrary, who was parting 
with one who had had little means of serving "her, ex- 
cept by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome 
by sorrow ; so that, when I kissed her at our final fare- 
well, she put her arms about my neck, and wept with- 
out speaking a word. I hoped to return in a week at 
farthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth night 
from that, and every night afterwards, she should wait 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 35 

for me at six o'clock, near the bottom of Great Titch- 
field Street, which had been our customary haven, as it 
were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other 
in the great Mediterranean of Oxford Street. This, 
and other measures of precaution, I took : one only I 
forgot. She had either never told me, or (as a matter 
of no great interest) I had forgotten, her surname. It is a 
general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in 
her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading women of 
higher pretensions) to style themselves Miss Doug- 
lass, Miss Montague, &c, but simply by their Chris- 
tian names, Mary, Jane, Frances, &c. Her surname, 
as the surest means of tracing her, I ought now to have 
inquired ; but the truth is, having no reason to think 
that our meeting could, in consequence of a short inter- 
ruption, be more difficult or uncertain than it had been 
for so many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment ad- 
verted to it as necessary, or placed it amongst my 
memoranda against this parting interview ; and, my 
final anxieties being spent in comforting her with hopes, 
and in pressing upon her the necessity of getting some 
medicines for a violent cough and hoarseness with 
which she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was 
too late to recall her. 

It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Glou- 
cester CofFee-House ; and, the Bristol Mail being on the 
point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine 
fluent motion* of this mail soon laid me asleep : it is 
somewhat remarkable, that the first easy or refreshing 

* The Bristol Mail is the best appointed in the kingdom ; owing 
to the double advantage of an unusually good road, and of an extra 
sum for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. 



36 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

sleep, which I had enjoyed for some months, was on the 
outside of a mail-coach, — a bed which, at this day, I 
find rather an uneasy one. Connected with this sleep 
was a little incident, which served, as hundreds of oth- 
ers did at that time, to convince me how easily a man, 
who has never been in any great distress, may pass 
through life without knowing, in his own person at 
least, any thing of the possible goodness of the human 
heart, — or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible 
vileness. So thick a curtain of manners is drawn over 
the features and expression of men's natures, that, to the 
ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite 
field of varieties which lie between them, are all con- 
founded, the vast and multitudinous compass of their 
several harmonies reduced to the meagre outline of 
differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of ele- 
mentary sounds. The case was this : for the first four 
or five miles from London, I annoyed my fellow pas- 
senger on the roof by occasionally falling against him 
when the coach gave a lurch to his side ; and, indeed, 
if the road had been less smooth and level than it is, I 
should have fallen off from weakness. Of this annoy- 
ance he complained heavily, as perhaps, in the same 
circumstances, most people would ; he expressed his 
complaint, however, more morosely than the occasion 
seemed to warrant ; and, if I had parted with him at 
that moment, I should have thought of him (if I had 
considered it worth while to think of him at all) as a 
surly and almost brutal fellow. However, I was con- 
scious that I had given him some cause for complaint ; 
and therefore I apologized to him, and assured him I 
would do what I could to avoid falling asleep for the 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 37 

future ; and, at the same time, in as few words as pos- 
sible, I explained to him that I was ill, and in a weak 
state from long suffering, and that I could not afford at 
that time to take an inside place. The man's manner 
changed, upon hearing this explanation, in an instant ; 
and when I next woke for a minute from the noise and 
lights of Hounslow, (for, in spite of my wishes and 
efforts, I had fallen asleep again within two minutes 
from the time I had spoken to him,) I found that he had 
put his arm round me to protect me from falling off; 
and for the rest of my journey he behaved to me with 
the gentleness of a woman, so that, at length, I almost 
lay in his arms ; — and this was the more kind, as he 
could not have known that I was not going the whole 
way to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I did 
go rather farther than I intended ; for so genial and 
refreshing was my sleep, that the next time, after leav- 
ing Hounslow, that I fully awoke, was upon the sudden 
pulling up of the mail, (possibly at a post-office,) and, 
on inquiry, I found that we had reached Maidenhead, 
six or seven miles, I think, ahead of Salt Hill. Here I 
alighted ; and for the half-minute that the mail stopped, 
I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from 
the transient glimpse I had of him in Piccadilly, 
seemed to me to be a gentleman's butler, or person 
of that rank) to go to bed without delay. This I prom- 
ised, though with no intention of doing so ; and, in 
fact, I immediately set forward, or rather backward, on 
foot. It must then have been nearly midnight ; but so 
slowly did I creep along, that I heard a clock in a cot- 
tage strike four before I turned down the lane from 



38 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

Slough to Eaton. The air and the sleep had both 
refreshed me ; but I was weary nevertheless. I re- 
member a thought (obvious enough, and which has 
been prettily expressed by a Roman poet) which gave 
me some consolation at that moment under my poverty. 
There had been, some time before, a murder committed 
on or near Hounslow Heath. I think I cannot be mis- 
taken when I say that the name of the murdered per- 
son was Steele, and that he was the owner of a laven- 
der plantation in that neighborhood. Every step of 
my progress was bringing me nearer to the heath ; 
and it naturally occurred to me that I and the accursed 
murderer, if he were that night abroad, might at every 
instant be unconsciously approaching each other 
through the darkness ; in which case, said I, supposing 
I — instead of being (as indeed I am) little better than 
an outcast, 

Lord of my learning and no land beside — 

were, like my friend, Lord , heir by general re- 
pute to ,£70,000 per ann., what a panic should I be 
under at this moment about my throat ! Indeed, it was 
not likely that Lord should ever be in my situ- 
ation. But nevertheless, the spirit of the remark re- 
mains true, that vast power and possessions make a 
man shamefully afraid of dying ; and I am convinced 
that many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, by 
fortunately being poor, enjoy the full use of their nat- 
ural courage, would, if at the very instant of going into 
action news were brought to them that they had unex- 
pectedly succeeded to an estate in England of <£50,000 
a year, feel their dislike to bullets considerably sharp- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 39 

ened,* and their efforts at perfect equanimity and self- 
possession proportionally difficult. So true it is, in the 
language of a wise man whose own experience had 
made him acquainted with both fortunes, that riches 
are better fitted 

To slacken virtue and abate her edge, 

Than tempt her to do aught may merit praise. 

Paradise Regained. 

I dally with my subject, because, to myself, the 
remembrance of these times is profoundly interesting. 
But my reader shall not have any further cause to 
complain ; for I now hasten to its close. In the road 
between Slough and Eton I fell asleep ; and, just as 
the morning began to dawn, I was awakened by the 
voice of a man standing over me and surveying me. 
I know not what he was. He was an ill-looking fellow, 
but not therefore, of necessity, an ill-meaning fellow ; 
or, if he were, I suppose he thought that no person 
sleeping out-of-doors in winter could be worth robbing. 
In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, I 
beg to assure him, if he should be among my readers, 
that he was mistaken. After a slight remark he passed 
on ; I was not sorry at his disturbance, as it enabled me 
to pass through Eton before people were generally up. 
The night had been heavy and lowering ; but towards 
the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the 
ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I 

* It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank and 
wealth, have, in our own day, as well as throughout our history, 
been amongst the foremost in courting danger in battle. True ; but 
this is not the case supposed. Long familiarity with power has to 
them deadened its effect and its attractions. 



40 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

slipped through Eton unobserved ; washed myself, and, 
as far as possible, adjusted my dress at a little public 
house in Windsor; and, about eight o'clock, went down 
towards Pote's. On my road I met some junior boys, 
of whom I made inquiries. An Etonian is always a 
gentleman; and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, 

they answered me civilly. My friend, Lord , was 

gone to the University of . " Ibi omnis efFusus 

labor ! " I had, however, other friends at Eton ; but it 
is not to all who wear that name in prosperity that a 
man is willing to present himself in distress. On recol- 
lecting myself, however, I asked for the Earl of 

D , to whom (though my acquaintance with him 

was not so intimate as with some others) I should not 
have shrunk from presenting myself under any circum- 
stances. He was still at Eton, though, I believe, on the 
wing for Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, 
and asked to breakfast. 

Here let me stop for a moment to check my reader 
from any erroneous conclusions ; because I have had 
occasion incidentally to speak of various patrician 
friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself any 
pretensions to rank or high blood. I thank God that I 
have not ; I am the son of a plain English merchant, 
esteemed during his life for his great integrity, and 
strongly attached to literary pursuits; (indeed, he was 
himself, anonymously, an author ;) if he had lived, it 
was expected that he would have been very rich ; but, 
dying prematurely, he left no more than about <£;30,000 
amongst seven different claimants. My mother I may 
mention with honor, as still more highly gifted. For, 
though unpretending to the name and honors of a liter- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 41 

ary woman, I shall presume to call her (what many- 
literary women are not) an intellectual woman ; and I 
believe that if ever her letters should be collected and 
published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as 
much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as pure 
" mother English," racy and fresh with idiomatic 
graces, as any in our language, hardly excepting those 
of Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honors of 
descent ; I have no others ; and I have thanked God 
sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a 
station which raises a man too eminently above the 
level of his fellow-creatures is not the most favorable 
to moral or to intellectual qualities. 

Lord D placed before me a most magnificent 

breakfast. It was really so ; but in my eyes it seemed 
trebly magnificent, from being the first regular meal, 
the first " good man's table," that I had sat down to 
for months. Strange to say, however, I could scarcely 
eat any thing. On the day when I first received my 
<£10 bank note, I had gone to a baker's shop and bought 
a couple of rolls ; this very shop I had two months or 
six weeks before surveyed with an eagerness of desire 
which it was almost humiliating to me to recollect. I 
remembered the story about Otway ; and feared that 
there might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had 
no need for alarm ; my appetite was quite sunk, and I 
became sick before I had eaten half of what I had 
bought. This effect, from eating what approached to a 
meal, I continued to feel for weeks ; or, when I did not 
experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, 
sometimes with acidity, sometimes immediately and 
without any acidity. On the present occasion, at Lord 



42 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

D 's table, I found myself not at all better than 

usual ; and, in the midst of luxuries, I had no appetite. 
I had, however, unfortunately, at all times a craving 
for wine ; I explained my situation, therefore, to Lord 
D , and gave him a short account of my late suf- 
ferings, at which he expressed great compassion, and 
called for wine. This gave me a momentary relief 
and pleasure ; and on all occasions when I had an 
opportunity, I never failed to drink wine, which I 
worshipped then as I have since worshipped opium. 
I am convinced, however, that this indulgence in wine 
continued to strengthen my malady, for the tone of 
m} 7- stomach was apparently quite sunk ; but by a better 
regimen it might sooner, and perhaps effectually, have 
been revived. I hope that it was not from this love of 
wine that I lingered in the neighborhood of my Eton 
friends ; I persuaded myself then that it was from re- 
luctance to ask of Lord D , on whom I was con- 
scious I had not sufficient claims, the particular service 
in quest of which I had come to Eton. I was, however, 
unwilling to lose my journey, and — I asked it. Lord 

D , whose good nature was unbounded, and which, 

in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his 
compassion perhaps for my condition, and his knowl- 
edge of my intimacy with some of his relatives, than 
by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own 
direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He 
acknowledged that he did not like to have any dealings 
with money-lenders, and feared lest such a transaction 
might come to the ears of his connections. Moreover, 
he doubted whether his signature, whose expectations 
were so much more bounded than those of , would 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 43 

avail with my unchristian friends. However, he did 
not wish, as it seemed, to mortify me by an absolute 
refusal ; for after a little consideration, he promised, 
under certain conditions, which he pointed out, to give 

his security. Lord D was at this time not eighteen 

years of age ; but I have often doubted, on recollecting, 
since, the good sense and prudence which on this oc- 
casion he mingled with so much urbanity of manner, 
(an urbanity which in him wore the grace of youthful 
sincerity,) whether any statesman — the oldest and 
the most accomplished in diplomacy — could have ac- 
quitted himself better under the same circumstances. 
Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a 
business, without surveying you with looks as austere 
and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head. 

Recomforted by this promise, which was not quite 
equal to the best, but far above the worst that I had 
pictured to myself as possible, I returned in a Windsor 
coach to London three days after I had quitted it. And 
now I come to the end of my story. The Jews did not 

approve of Lord D 's terms ; whether they would 

in the end have acceded to them, and were only seek- 
ing time for making due inquiries, I know not ; but 
many delays were made, — time passed on, — the small 
fragment of my bank-note had just melted away, and 
before any conclusion could have been put to the busi- 
ness, I must have relapsed into my former state of 
wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at this crisis, an 
opening was made, almost by accident, for reconciliation 
with my friends. I quitted London in haste, for a re- 
mote part of England ; after some time, I proceeded 
to the university ; and it was not until many months 



44 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

had passed away, that I had it in my power again to 
revisit the ground which had become so interesting to 
me, and to this day remains so, as the chief scene of 
my youthful sufferings. 

Meantime, what had become of poor Ann ? For her 
I have reserved my concluding words : according to our 
agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for her every 
night, so long as I stayed in London, at the corner of 
Titchfield Street. I inquired for her of every one who 
was likely to know her ; and during the last hours of 
my stay in London, I put into activity every means of 
tracing her that my knowledge of London suggested, 
and the limited extent of my power made possible. 
The street where she had lodged I knew, but not the 
house ; and I remember at last some account which she 
had given of ill treatment from her landlord, which 
made it probable that she had quitted those lodgings 
before we parted. She had few acquaintance ; most 
people, besides, thought that the earnestness of my 
inquiries arose from motives which moved their laugh- 
ter, or their slight regard ; and others, thinking that I 
was in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some 
trifles, were naturally and excusably indisposed to give 
me any clue to her, if, indeed, they had any to give. 
Finally, as my despairing resource, on the day I left 
London I put into the hands of the only person who (I 
was sure) must know Ann by sight, from having been 

in company with us once or twice, an address to 

in shire, at that time the residence of my family. 

But, to this hour, I have never heard a syllable about 
her. This, amongst such troubles as most men meet 
with in this life, has been my heaviest affliction. If she 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 45 

lived, doubtless we must have been sometimes in 
search of each other, at the very same moment, 
through the mighty labyrinths of London ; perhaps 
even within a few feet of each other, — a barrier no 
wider, in a London street, often amounting in the end to 
a separation for eternity ! During some years, I hoped 
that she did live ; and I suppose that, in the literal and 
unrhetorical use of the word myriad, I may say, that on 
my different visits to London, I have looked into many, 
many myriads of female faces, in the hope of meeting 
her. I should know her again amongst a thousand, if 
I saw her for a moment ; for, though not handsome, 
she had a sweet expression of countenance, and a pe- 
culiar and graceful carriage of the head. I sought her, 
I have said, in hope. So it was for years ; but now I 
should fear to see her ; and her cough, which grieved 
me when I parted with her, is now my consolation. I 
now wish to see her no longer, but think of her, more 
gladly, as one long since laid in the grave ; — in the 
grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen ; — taken away, be- 
fore injuries and cruelty had blotted out and transfig- 
ured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians 
had completed the ruin they had begun. 

So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother, 
thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest 
the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from 
thee ! the time was come at last that I no more should 
pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces ; no more 
should dream, and wake in captivity to the pangs of 
hunger. Successors, too many, to myself and Ann, 
have, doubtless, since then trodden in our footsteps ; 
inheritors of our calamities ; other orphans than Ann 



46 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

have sighed ; tears have been shed by other children ; 
and thou, Oxford Street, hast since echoed to the groans 
of innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the 
storm which I had outlived seemed to have been the 
pledge of a long fair weather; the premature sufferings 
which I had paid down, to have been accepted as a 
ransom for many years to come, as a price of long 
immunity from sorrow ; and if again I walked in 
London, a solitary and contemplative man, (as often- 
times I did,) I walked for the most part in serenity 
and peace of mind. And, although it is true that the 
calamities of my noviciate in London had struck root 
so deeply in my bodily constitution that afterwards they 
shot up and flourished afresh, and grew into a noxious 
umbrage that has overshadowed and darkened my lat- 
ter years, yet these second assaults of suffering were 
met with a fortitude more confirmed, with the re- 
sources of a maturer intellect, and with alleviations 
from sympathizing affection, how deep and tender! 

Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years 
that were far asunder were bound together by subtile 
links of suffering derived from a common root. And 
herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of 
human desires, that oftentimes on moonlight nights, 
during my first mournful abode in London, my consola- 
tion was (if such it could be thought) to gaze from Ox- 
ford Street up every avenue in succession which pierces 
through the heart of Mary-le-bone to the fields and the 
woods; for that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the 
long vistas which lay part in light and part in shade, " that 

is the road to the north, and, therefore to ; and 

if I had the wings of a dove, that way I would fly for 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 47 

comfort." Thus I said, and thus I wished in my blind- 
ness ; yet, even in that very northern region it was, in 
that very valley, nay, in that very house to which my 
erroneous wishes pointed, that this second birth of my 
sufferings began, and that they again threatened to be- 
siege the citadel of life and hope. There it was, that 
for years I was persecuted by visions as ugly, and as 
ghastly phantoms as ever haunted the couch of an 
Orestes ; and in this unhappier than he, that sleep, 
which comes to all as a respite and a restoration, and 
to him especially as a blessed balm for his wounded 
heart and his haunted brain, visited me as my bitterest 
scourge. Thus blind was I in my desires ; yet, if a 
veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man 
and his future calamities, the same veil hides from him 
their alleviations ; and a grief which had not been 
feared is met by consolations which had not been 
hoped. I, therefore, who participated, as it were, in 
the troubles of Orestes, (excepting only in his agitated 
conscience,) participated no less in all his supports ; 
my Eumenides, like his, were at my bed-feet, and 
stared in upon me through the curtains ; but, watching 
by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me 
company through the heavy watches of the night, sat 
my Electra ; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of 
my later years, thou wast my Electra ! and neither in 
nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection wouldst 
permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English 
wife. For thou thoughtst not much to stoop to humble 
offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of ten- 
derest affection ; to wipe away for years the unwhole- 
some dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips 



48 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

when parched and baked with fever ; nor even when 
thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy be- 
come infected with the spectacle of my dread contest 
with phantoms and shadowy enemies, that oftentimes 
bade me " sleep no more 1" — not even then didst 
thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw 
thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, 
more than Electra did of old. For she, too, though she 
was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king * 
of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face f in her 
robe. 

But these troubles are past, and thou wilt read these 
records of a period so dolorous to us both as the le- 
gend of some hideous dream that can return no more. 
Meantime I am again in London ; and again I pace the 
terraces of Oxford Street by night ; and oftentimes, — 
when I am oppressed by anxieties that demand all my 
philosophy and the comfort of thy presence to support, 
and yet remember that I am separated from thee by 
three hundred miles, and the length of three dreary 
months, — I look up the streets that run northward 
from Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights, and recol- 
lect my youthful ejaculation of anguish ; and remem- 

* Agamemnon. 

t Ouuu 6stg sigo nsniov. The scholar will know that through- 
out this passage I refer to the early scenes of the Orestes; one of the 
most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the 
dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader, it may be 
necessary to say, that the situation at the opening of the drama is 
that of a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal 
possession of a suffering conscience, (or, in the mythology of the 
play, haunted by the furies,) and in circumstances of immediate dan- 
ger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard from nominal 
friends. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 49 

bering that thou art sitting alone in that same valley, 
and mistress of that very house to which my heart 
turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I think that, 
though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late, 
the promptings of my heart may yet have had refer- 
ence to a remoter time, and may be justified if read in 
another meaning ; and if I could allow myself to de- 
scend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, 1 
should again say to myself, as I look to the north, " O 
that I had the wings of a dove ! "• and with how just 
a confidence in thy good and gracious nature might I 
add the other half of my early ejaculation, — " And that 
way I would fly for comfort ! " 



THE PLEASURES OF (MUM. 



It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had 
been a trifling incident in my life, I might have forgot- 
ten its date ; but cardinal events are not to be forgotten ; 
and, from circumstances connected with it, I remember 
that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. Dur- 
ing that season I was in London, having come thither 
for the first time since my entrance at college. And 
my introduction to opium arose in the following way. 
From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my 
head in cold water at least once a day ; being suddenly 
seized with tooth-ache, I attributed it to some relaxation 
caused by an accidental intermission of that practice ; 
jumped out of bed ; plunged my head into a basin of 
cold water ; and, with hair thus wetted, went to 
sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I 
awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head 
and face, from which I had hardly any respite for 
about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it 
was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets ; 
rather to run away, if possible, from my torments, than 
with any distinct purpose. By accident I met a college 
acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium ! dread 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 51 

agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard 
of it as I had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no 
further ; how unmeaning a sound was it at that time ! 
what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart ! 
what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remem- 
brances ! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a 
mystic importance attached to the minutest circum- 
stances connected with the place and the time, and the 
man (if man he was) that first laid open to me the par- 
adise of opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet 
and cheerless ; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours 
lias not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My 
road homewards lay through Oxford Street ; and near 
" the stately Pantheon " (as Mr. Wordsworth has oblig- 
ingly called it) I saw a druggist's shop. The drug- 
gist, (unconscious minister of celestial pleasures !) as 
if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and 
stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected 
to look on a Sunday ; and when I asked for the tinc- 
ture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man 
might do ; and furthermore, out of my shilling re- 
turned to me what seemed to be a real copper half- 
penny, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Neverthe- 
less, in spite of such indications of humanity, he has 
ever since existed in my mind as a beatific vision of an 
immortal druggist, sent down to earth on a special mis- 
sion to myself. And it confirms me in this way of 
considering him, that, when I next came up to London, 
I sought him near the stately Pantheon, and found him 
not ; and thus to me, who knew not his name, (if indeed 
he had one,) he seemed rather to have vanished from 
Oxford Street than to have removed in any bodily 



52 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

fashion. The reader may choose to think of him as, 
possibly, no more than a sublunary druggist : it may 
be so, but my faith is better : I believe him to have 
evanesced,* or evaporated. So unwillingly would I 
connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and 
place, and creature, that first brought me acquainted 
with the celestial drug. 

Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I 
lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I 
was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery 
of opium-taking ; and what I took, I took under every 
disadvantage. But I took it ; and in an hour, — O 
heavens ! what a revulsion ! what an upheaving, from 
its lowest depths, of the inner spirit ! what an apoc- 
alypse of the world within me ! That my pains had 
vanished was now a trifle in my eyes ; this negative 
effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those posi- 
tive effects which had opened before me, in the abyss 
of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here 
was a panacea, a tpag^axov venev&eg, for all human woes ; 
here was the secret of happiness, about which philos- 
ophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discov- 
ered ; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and 

* Evanesced : — this way of going off from the stage of life ap- 
pears to have heen well known in the 17lh century, but at that time 
to have been considered a peculiar privilege of blood royal, and by 
no means to be allowed to druggists. For, about the year 1686, a 
poet of rather ominous name, (and who, by the bye, did ample justice 
to his name,) viz. Mr. Flat-man, in speaking of the death of 
Charles II., expresses his surprise that any prince should commit so 
absurd an act as dying ; because, says he, 

Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear ; 

They should abscond, that is, into the other world. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. • 53 

carried in the waist-coat pocket ; portable ecstacies 
might be had corked up in a pint-bottle ; and peace of 
mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. 
But if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am 
laughing ; and I can assure him that nobody will laugh 
long who deals much with opium : its pleasures even 
are of a grave and solemn complexion ; and in his hap- 
piest state, the opium-eater cannot present himself in 
the character of L? Allegro ; even then, he speaks and 
thinks as becomes 11 Penseroso. Nevertheless, I have 
a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the 
midst of my own misery ; and, unless when I am 
checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I 
shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these 
annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must 
allow a little to my infirm nature in this respect ; and 
with a few indulgences of that sort, I shall endeavor to 
be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, 
so anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is 
falsely reputed. 

And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects ; 
for upon all that has been hitherto written on the sub- 
ject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who 
may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial 
right) or by professors of medicine, writing ex cath- 
edra, I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce, 
— Lies ! lies ! lies ! I remember once, in passing a 
book-stall, to have caught these words from a page of 
some satiric author : " By this time I became con- 
vinced that the London newspapers spoke truth at least 
twice a week, viz. on Tuesday and Saturday, and might 
safely be depended upon for — the list of bankrupts." 



54 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

In like manner, I do by no means deny that some 
truths have been delivered to the world in regard to 
opium ; thus, it has been repeatedly affirmed by the 
learned, that opium is a dusky brown in color, — and 
this, take notice, I grant ; secondly, that it is rather 
dear, which also I grant, — for, in my time, East India 
opium has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey, 
eight; and, thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, 
most probably you must do what is particularly dis- 
agreeable to any man of regular habits, viz., — die.* 
These weighty propositions are, all and singular, true ; 
I cannot gainsay them ; and truth ever was, and will 
be, commendable. But in these three theorems, I be- 
lieve we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet 
accumulated by man on the subject of opium. And 
therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room 
for further discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to 
come forward and lecture on this matter. 

First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for 
granted, by all who ever mention opium, formally or 
incidentally, that it does, or can, produce intoxication. 
Now, reader, assure yourself, meo periculo, that no 
quantity of opium ever did, or could, intoxicate. As to 
the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum) 
that might certainly intoxicate if a man could bear to 
take enough of it ; but why ? because it contains so 

* Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted ; 
for, in a pirated edition of Buchan's Domestic Medicine, which I 
once saw in the hands of a farmer's wife who was studying it for 
the benefit of her health, the Doctor was made to say, — "Be par- 
ticularly careful never to take above five-and-twenty ounces of lau- 
danum at once ;" the true reading being probably five-and-twenty 
drops, which are held to be equal to about one grain of crude opium. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 55 

much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much 
opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is 
incapable of producing any state of body at all resem- 
bling that which is produced by alcohol ; and not in 
degree only incapable, but even in kind; it is not in 
the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, 
that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine 
is always mounting, and tending to a crisis, after 
which it declines ; that from opium, when once gener- 
ated, is stationary for eight or ten hours ; the first, to 
borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case 
of acute, the second of chronic, pleasure ; the one is a 
flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the 
main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders 
the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary, (if taken 
in a proper manner,) introduces amongst them the 
most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine 
robs a man of his self-possession ; opium greatly invig- 
orates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and 
gives a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation, 
to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and 
the hatreds, of the drinker ; opium, on the contrary, 
communicates serenity and equipoise to all the facul- 
ties, active or passive ; and with respect to the temper 
and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort 
of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, 
and which would probably always accompany a bodily 
constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, 
for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to 
the heart and the benevolent affections ; but then, with 
this remarkable difference, that in the sudden develop- 
ment of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebria- 



56 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

tion, there is always more or less of a maudlin charac- 
ter, which exposes it to the contempt of the bystander. 
Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed 
tears, — no mortal knows why ; and the sensual crea- 
ture is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the 
benigner feelings, incident to opium, is no febrile ac- 
cess, but a healthy restoration to that state which the 
mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any 
deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and 
quarrelled with the impulses of a heart originally just 
and good. True it is, that even wine, up to a certain 
point, and with certain men, rather tends to exalt and to 
steady the intellect ; I myself, who have never been a 
great wine-drinker, used to find that half a dozen glass- 
es of wine advantageously affected the faculties, bright- 
ened and intensified the consciousness, and gave to the 
mind a feeling of being " ponderibus librata suis ;" and 
certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, 
of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the 
contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety ; and it is 
when they are drinking (as some old gentleman says 
in Athenceus) that men display themselves in their 
true complexion of character ; which surely is not dis- 
guising themselves. But still, wine constantly leads a 
man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance ; and 
beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatilize and to 
disperse the intellectual energies ; whereas opium al- 
ways seems to compose what had been agitated, and to 
concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to 
sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or 
tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a con- 
dition which calls up into supremacy the merely hu- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 57 

man, too often the brutal, part of his nature ; but the 
opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from 
any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels 
that the diviner part of his nature is paramount ; that 
is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless se- 
renity ; and over all is the great light of the majestic 
intellect. 

This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject 
of opium : of which church I acknowledge myself to 
be the only member, — the alpha and omega ; but then 
it is to be recollected, that I speak from the ground of 
a large and profound personal experience, whereas 
most of the unscientific* authors who have at all treated 



* Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c, who show sufficiently 
by their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, 
1 must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of 
" Anastasius." This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to pre- 
sume him an opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him in 
that character, from the grievous misrepresentation which he has 
given of its effects, al page 215-217, of vol. I. Upon consideration, 
it must appear such to the author himself; for, waiving the errors I 
have insisted on in the text, which (and others) are adopted in the 
fullest manner, he will himself admit, that an old gentleman, " with 
a snow-while heard," who eats " ample doses of opium," and is yet 
aide to deliver what is meant and received as very weighty counsel 
on the had effects of that practice, is hut an indifferent evidence that 
opium either kills people prematurely, or sends them into a mad- 
house. But, for my part, 1 see into this old gentleman and his mo- 
tives ; the fact is, he was enamored of" the little golden receptacle 
of the pernicious drug," which Anastasius carried about him ; and 
no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred, as that of 
frightening its owner out of his wits, (which, by the bye, are none of 
the strongest.) This commentary throws a new light upon the case 
and greatly improves it as a story ; for the old gentleman's speech 
considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly absurd ; but, con- 
sidered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently. 



58 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

of opium, and even of those who have written expressly 
on the materia medica, make it evident, from the hor- 
ror they express of it, that their experimental knowl- 
edge of its action is none at all. I will, however, can- 
didly acknowledge that I have met with one person who 
bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as stag- 
gered my own incredulity ; for he was a surgeon, and 
had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say 
to him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him 
with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends 
apologized for him, by suggesting that he was con- 
stantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the 
accusation, said I, is not prima facie, and of necessity, 
an absurd one ; but the defence is. To my surprise, 
however, he insisted, that both his enemies and his 
friends were in the right. " I will maintain," said he, 
" that I do talk nonsense ; and secondly, I will main- 
tain that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with 
any view to profit, but solely and simply," said he, 
" solely and simply, — solely and simply, (repeating it 
three times over,) because I am drunk with opium ; 
and that daily." I replied, that as to the allegation of 
his enemies, as it seemed to be established upon such 
respectable testimony, seeing that the three parties 
concerned all agreed in it, it did not become me to 
question it ; but the defence set up I must demur to. He 
proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his 
reasons ; but it seemed to me so impolite to pursue an 
argument which must have presumed a man mistaken 
in a point belonging to his own profession, that I did 
not press him even when his course of argument 
seemed open to objection ; not to mention that a man 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 59 

who talks nonsense, even though " with no view to 
profit," is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a 
dispute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, 
however, that the authority of a surgeon, and one who 
was reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to 
my prejudice ; but still I must plead my experience, 
which was greater than his greatest by seven thousand 
drops a day ; and though it was not possible to sup- 
pose a medical man unacquainted with the characteris- 
tic symptoms of vinous intoxication, yet it struck me 
that he might proceed on a logical error of using the 
word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending 
it generically to all modes of nervous excitement, in- 
stead of restricting it as the expression for a specific 
sort of excitement, connected with certain diagnostics. 
Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that they 
had been drunk upon green tea ; and a medical stu- 
dent in London, for whose knowledge in his profession 
I have reason to feel great respect, assured me, the 
other day, that a patient, in recovering from an illness, 
had got drunk on a beef-steak. 

Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error 
in respect to opium, I shall notice very briefly a second 
and a third ; which are, that the elevation of spirits 
produced by opium is necessarily followed by a propor- 
tionate depression, and that the natural and even imme- 
diate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, 
animal and mental. The first of these errors I shall 
content myself with simply denying ; assuring my 
reader, that for ten years, during which I took opium 
at intervals, the clay succeeding to that on which I 
allowed myself this luxury was always a day of 
unusually good spirits. 



60 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or 
rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of 
Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany, the practice of 
opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is 
classed under the head of narcotics, and some such 
effect it may produce in the end ; but the primary 
effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, 
to excite and stimulate the system : this first stage of 
its action always lasted with me, during my noviciate, 
for upwards of eight hours ; so that it must be the fault 
of the opium-eater himself if he does not so time his 
exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as that the 
whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend 
upon his sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, it seems, are 
absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, 
on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But that the 
reader may judge of the degree in which opium is 
likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall 
(by way of treating the question illustratively, rather 
than argumentatively) describe the way in which I 
myself often passed an opium evening in London, 
during the period between 1804- IS 12. It will be 
seen, that at least opium did not move me to seek 
solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid 
state of self-involution ascribed to the Turks. I give 
this account at the risk of being pronounced a crazy 
enthusiast or visionary ; but I regard that little. I must 
desire my reader to bear in mind, that I was a hard 
student, and at severe studies for all the rest of my 
time ; and certainly I had a right occasionally to relaxa- 
tions as well as other people ; these, however, I allowed 
myself but seldom. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 61 

The late Duke of used to say, » Next Friday, 

by the blessing of Heaven, I purpose to be drunk ;" and 
in like manner I used to fix beforehand how often, 
within a given time, and when, I would commit a de- 
bauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in 
three weeks ; for at that time I could not have ventured 
to call every day (as I did afterwards) for " a glass of 
laudanum nrgus, warm, and without sugar." No ; as 
I have said, I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, 
more than once in three weeks : this was usually on a' 
Tuesday or a Saturday night ; my reason for which 
was this. In those days Grassini sang at the opera ; 
and her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I 
had ever heard. I know not what may be the state of 
the opera-house now, having never been within its 
walls for seven or eight years ; but at that time it was 
by much the most pleasant place of public resort in 
London for passing an evening. Five shillings ad- 
mitted one to the gallery, which was subject to far less 
annoyance than the pit of the theatres ; the orchestra 
was distinguished, by its sweet and melodious grandeur, 
from all English orchestras, the composition of which, 
I confess, is not acceptable to my ear, from the pre- 
dominance of the clangorous instruments, and the 
absolute tyranny of the violin. The chorusses were 
divine to hear ; and when Grassini appeared in some 
interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her pas- 
sionate soul as Andromache, at the tomb of Hector, 
&c, I question whether any Turk, of all that ever 
entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had 
half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, I honor the bar- 
barians too much by supposing them capable of any 



62 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an 
Englishman. For music is an intellectual or a sensual 
pleasure, according to the temperament of him who 
hears it. And, by the bye, with the exception of the 
fine extravaganza on that subject in Twelfth Night, I 
do not recollect more than one thing said adequately 
on the subject of music in all literature ; it is a passage 
in the Religio Medici* of Sir T. Brown, and, though 
chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philo- 
sophic value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of 
musical effects. The mistake of most people is, to 
suppose that it is by the ear they communicate with 
music, and therefore that they are purely passive to its 
effects. But this is not so ; it is by the reaction of the 
-^ mind upon the notices of the ear (the matter coming by 
the senses, the form from the mind) that the pleasure 
is constructed ; and therefore it is that people of equally 
• good ear differ so much in this point from one another. 
Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the 
mind, generally increases, of necessity, that particular 
mode of its activity by which we are able to construct 
out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate 
intellectual pleasure. But, says a friend, a succession 
of musical sounds is to me like a collection of Arabic 
characters : I can attach no ideas to them. Ideas ! my 
good sir ? there is no occasion for them ; all that class 
of ideas, which can be available in such a case, has a 
language of representative feelings. But this is a sub- 
ject foreign to my present purposes ; it is sufficient to 

* I have not the hook at this moment to consult ; hut I think the 
passage begins, " And even that tavern music, which makes one 
man merry, another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion," &c. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 63 

say, that a chorus, &c. of elaborate harmony displayed 
before me, as in a piece of arras-work, the whole of 
my past life, — not as if recalled by an act of memory, 
but as if present and incarnated in the music ; no lon- 
ger painful to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents 
removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction, and its 
passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this 
was to be had for five shillings. And over and above 
the music of the stage and the orchestra, I had all around 
me, in the intervals of the performance, the music of 
the Italian language talked by Italian women ; for the 
gallery was usually crowded with Italians; and I listened 
with a pleasure such as that with which Weld, the trav- 
eller, lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter 
of Indian women ; for the less you understand of a 
language, the more sensible you are to the melody or 
harshness of its sounds ; for such a purpose, therefore, 
it was an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian 
scholar, reading it but little, and not speaking it at 
all, nor understanding a tenth part of what I heard 
spoken. 

These were my opera pleasures ; but another pleas- 
ure I had, which, as it could be had only on a Saturday 
night, occasionally struggled with my love of the opera ; 
for, at that time, Tuesday and Saturday were the regu- 
lar opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be 
rather obscure, but, I can assure the reader, not at all 
more so than Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many 
other biographers and auto-biographers of fair reputa- 
tion. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only 
on a Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday night 
to me, more than any other night ? I had no labors that 



64 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

I rested from ; no wages to receive ; what needed I to 
care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons 
to hear Grassini ? True, most logical reader ; what 
you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is, 
that whereas different men throw their feelings into 
different channels, and most are apt to show their in- 
terest in the concerns of the poor chiefly by sympathy, 
expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses 
and sorrows, 1, at that time, was disposed to express my 
interest by sympathizing with their pleasures. The 
pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of, — more 
than I wished to remember ; but the pleasures of the 
poor, their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from 
bodily toil, can never become oppressive to contemplate. 
Now Saturday night is the season for the chief, regular, 
and periodic return of rest to the poor ; in this point the 
most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a common 
link of brotherhood ; almost all Christendom rests from 
its labors. It is a rest introductory to another rest ; 
and divided by a whole day and two nights from the 
renewal of toil. On this account I feel always, on a 
Saturday night, as though I also were released from 
some yoke of labor, had some wages to receive, and 
some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, there- 
fore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible, a 
spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I 
used often, on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, 
to wander forth, without much regarding the direction 
or the distance, to all the markets, and other parts of 
London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday night, 
for laying out their wages. Many a family party, con- 
sisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 65 

of his children, have I listened to, as they stood con- 
sulting on their ways and means, or the strength of 
their exchequer, or the price of household articles. 
Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their 
difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might 
be heard murmurs of discontent ; but far oftener ex- 
pressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of 
patience, hope, and tranquillity. And, taken generally, 
I must say, that, in this point at least, the poor are far 
more philosophic than the rich ; that they show a more 
ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as 
irremediable evils, or irreparable losses. Whenever I 
saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be 
intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion 
upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always 
judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages 
were a little higher, or expected to be so, or the quar- 
tern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions 
and butter were expected to fall, I was glad ; yet, if the 
contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of 
consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that ex- 
tracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from 
the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a 
compliance with the master-key. Some of these ram- 
bles led me to great distances ; for an opium-eater is 
too happy to observe the motion of time. And some- 
times in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical 
principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seek- 
ing ambitiously for a northwest passage, instead of 
circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had 
doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon 
such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical cn- 
5 



66 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

tries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without 
thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, bailie the audacity 
of porters, and confound the intellects of hackney- 
coachmen. I could almost have believed, at times, 
that I must be the first discoverer of some of these 
terra incognita, and doubted whether they had yet 
been laid down in the modern charts cf London. For 
all this, however, I paid a heavy price in distant years, 
when the human face tyrannized over my dreams, and 
the perplexities of my steps in London came back and 
haunted my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities moral 
or intellectual, that brought confusion to the reason, or 
anguish and remorse to the conscience. 

Thus I have shown that opium does not, of necessity, 
produce inactivity or torpor; but that, on the contrary, 
it often led me into markets and theatres. Yet, in 
candor, T will admit that markets and theatres are not 
the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater, when in the 
divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that state, 
crowds become an oppression to him ; music, even, too 
sensual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and 
silence, as indispensable conditions of those trances, or 
profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consum- 
mation of what opium can do for human nature. I, 
whose disease it was to meditate too much, and to ob- 
serve too little, and who, upon my first entrance at 
college, was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, 
from brooding too much on the sufferings which I had 
witnessed in London, was sufficiently aware of the 
tendencies of my own thoughts to do all I could to 
counteract them. I was, indeed, like a person who, 
according to the old legend, had entered the cave of 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 67 

Trophonius ; and the remedies I sought were to force 
myself into society, and to keep my understanding in 
continual activity upon matters of science. But for 
these remedies, I should certainly have become 
hypochondriacally melancholy. In after years, how- 
ever, when my cheerfulness was more fully reestab- 
lished, I yielded to my natural inclination for a solitary 
life. And at that time I often fell into these reveries 
upon taking opium ; and more than once it has happen- 
ed to me, on a summer night, when I have been at an 
open window, in a room from which I could overlook 
the sea at a mile below me, and could command a view 

of the great town of L , at about the same distance, 

that I have sat from sunset to sunrise, motionless, and 
without wishing to move. 

I shall be charged with mysticism, Behmenism, quiet- 
ism, &c, but that shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, 
the younger, was one of our wisest men ; and let my 
readers see if he, in his philosophical works, be half as 
unmystical as I am. I say, then, that it has often 
struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical 
of what took place in such a reverie. The town of 

L represented the earth, with its sorrows and its 

graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly for- 
gotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, 
and brooded over by dove-like calm, might not unfitly 
typify the mind, and the mood which then swayed it. 
For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance, 
and aloof from the uproar of life ; as if the tumult, the 
fever, and the strife were suspended ; a respite granted 
from the secret burdens of the heart ; a sabbath of 
repose ; a resting from human labors. Here were the 



G8 CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 

hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled 
with the peace which is in the grave ; motions of the 
intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxie- 
ties a halcyon calm ; a tranquillity that seemed no 
product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and 
equal antagonisms ; infinite activities, infinite repose. 

O just, subtile, and mighty opium ! that to the 
hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will 
never heal, and for " the pangs that tempt the spirit to 
rebel, 1 ' bringest an assuaging balm ; — eloquent opium ! 
that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes 
of wrath, and, to the guilty man, for one night givest 
back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure 
from blood, and, to the proud man, a brief oblivion for 
Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged ; 

that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the 
triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses, and 
confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences 
of unrighteous judges ; — thou buildest upon the bosom 
of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, 
cities and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and 
Praxiteles, — beyond the splendor of Babylon and He- 
katompylos ; and, " from the anarchy of dreaming 
sleep," callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried 
beauties, and the blessed household countenances, 
cleansed from the " dishonors of the grave." Thou 
only givest these gifts to man ; and thou hast the keys 
of Paradise, O just, subtile, and mighty opium ! 



INTRODUCTION 



TO 



THE PAINS OF OPIUM 



Courteous, and, I hope, indulgent reader, (for all 
my readers must be indulgent ones, or else, I fear, I 
shall shock them too much to count on their courtesy,) 
having accompanied me thus far, now let me request 
you to move onwards, for about eight years ; that is to 
say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance 
with opium first began) to 1812. The years of aca- 
demic life are now over and gone, — almost forgotten ; 
the student's cap no longer presses my temples ; if my 
cap exist at all, it presses those of some youthful 
scholar, I trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate 
a lover of knowledge. My gown is, by this time, I 
dare to say, in the same condition with many thousands 
of excellent books in the Bodleian, viz., diligently 
perused by certain studious moths and worms ; or 
departed, however, (which is all that I know of its 
fate,) to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which all 
the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, &c, 



70 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

have departed, (not to speak of still frailer vessels, such 
as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, &c.,) which occa- 
sional resemblances in the present generation of tea- 
cups, &c, remind me of having once possessed, but of 
whose departure and final fate, I, in common with 
most gownsmen of either university, could give, I sus- 
pect, but an obscure and conjectural history. The 
persecutions of the chapel-bell, sounding its unwelcome 
summons to six o'clock matins, interrupts my slumbers 
no longer ; the porter who rang it, upon whose beauti- 
ful nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in retali- 
ation, so many Greek epigrams whilst I was dressing, 
is dead, and has ceased to disturb any body ; and I, 
and many others, who suffered much from his tintin- 
nabulous propensities, have now agreed to overlook his 
errors, and have forgiven him. Even with the bell I 
am now in charity ; it rings, I suppose, as formerly, 
thrice a day ; and cruelly annoys, I doubt not, many 
worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace of mind ; 
but, as to me, in this year 1812, I regard its treach- 
erous voice no longer; (treacherous I call it, for, by 
some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and 
silvery tones as if it had been inviting one to a party ;) 
its tones have no longer, indeed, power to reach me, 
let the wind sit as favorable as the malice of the bell it- 
self could wish ; for I am two hundred and fifty miles 
away from it, and buried in the depth of mountains. 
And what am I doing amongst the mountains ? Ta- 
king opiui*. .' Yes, but what else ? Why, reader, in 
1812, the year we are now arrived at, as well as for 
some years previous, I have been chiefly studying Ger- 
man metaphvsics, in the writings of Kant, Fichte 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 71 

Schelling, &c. And how, and in what manner, do I 
live ? in short, what class or description of men do I 
belong to? I am at this period, viz., in 1812, living in 
a cottage ; and with a single female servant, (honi soit 
qui mat y pense,) who, amongst my neighbors, passes 
by the name of my "house-keeper." And, as a scholar 
and a man of learned education, and in that sense a 
gentleman, 1 may presume to class myself as an un- 
worthy member of that indefinite body called gentle- 
men. Partly on the ground I have assigned, perhaps, — 
partly because, from my having no visible calling or 
business, it is rightly judged that I must be living on 
my private fortune, — I am so classed by my neighbors ; 
and, by the courtesy of modern England, I am usually 
addressed on letters, &c, Esquire, though having, I 
fear, in the rigorous construction of heralds, but slender 
pretensions to that distinguished honor ; — yes, in popular 
estimation, I am X. Y. Z., Esquire, but not Justice of 
the Peace, nor Custos Rotulorum. Am I married r 
Not yet. And I still take opium ? On Saturday nights. 
And, perhaps, have taken it unblushingly ever since 
" the rainy Sunday," and " the stately Pantheon," and 
" the beatific druggist " of 1804 ? Even so. And 
how do I find my health after all this opium-eating ? in 
short, how do I do ? Why, pretty well, I thank you, 
reader ; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, " as well 
as can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say the 
real and simple truth, (it must not be forgotten that 
hitherto I thought to satisfy the theories of medical 
men, I ought to be ill,) I was never better in my life 
than in the spring of 1812 ; and I hope sincerely, that 
the quantity of claret, port, or " particular Madeira," 



72 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

which, in all probability, you, good reader, have taken, 
and design to take, for every term of eight years, du- 
ring your natural life, may as little disorder your health 
as mine was disordered by opium I had taken for the 
eight years between 1804 and 1812. Hence you 
may see again the danger of taking any medical ad- 
vice from Anastasius ; in divinity, for aught I know, 
or law, he may be a safe counsellor, but not in medi- 
cine. No ; it is far better to consult Dr. Buchan, as I 
did ; for I never forgot that worthy man's excellent sug- 
gestion, and I was " particularly careful not to take 
above five-and-twenty ounces of laudanum." To this 
moderation and temperate use of the article I may as- 
cribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at least, (i. e. in 1812,) 
I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors 
which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. 
At the same time, I have been only a dilettante eater of 
opium ; eight years' practice, even, with the single pre- 
caution of allowing sufficient intervals between every 
indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium 
necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now 
comes a different era. Move on, if you please, reader, 
to 1813. In the summer of the year we have just 
quitted, had suffered much in bodily health from dis- 
tress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. 
This event, being no ways related to the subject now be- 
fore me, further than through bodily illness which it pro- 
duced, I need not more particularly notice. Whether 
this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813, I 
know not ; but so it was, that, in the latter year, I was 
attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, 
in all respects the same as that which had caused me 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 73 

so much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a re- 
vival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my 
narrative on which, as respects my own self-justifi- 
cation, the whole of what follows may be said to hinge. 
And here I find myself in a perplexing dilemma : — 
Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's 
patience, by such a detail of my malady, and of my 
struggles with it, as might suffice to establish the fact 
of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and 
constant suffering ; or, on the other hand, by passing 
lightly over this critical part of my story, I must forego 
the benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of 
the reader, and must lay myself open to the miscon- 
struction of having slipped by the easy and gradual 
steps of self-indulging persons, from the first to the 
final stage of opium-eating, (a misconstruction to which 
there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers, 
from my previous acknowledgments.) This is the 
dilemma, the first horn of which would be sufficient to 
toss and gore any column of patient readers, though 
drawn up sixteen deep and constantly relieved by fresh 
men ; consequently that is not to be thought of. It 
remains, then, that I postulate so much as is necessary 
for my purpose. And let me take as full credit for 
what I postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good read- 
er, at the expense of your patience and my own. Be 
not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good 
opinion through my own forbearance and regard for 
your comfort. No ; believe all that I ask of you, viz., 
that I could resist no longer, — believe it liberally, and 
as an act of grace, or else in mere prudence ; for, if not, 
then, in the next edition of my Opium Confessions, re- 



74 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

vised and enlarged, I will make you believe, and trem- 
ble ; and, a force (Tennuyer, by mere dint of pandicu- 
lation, I will terrify all readers of mine from ever again 
questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to make. 
This, then, let me repeat : I postulate that, at the time 
I began to take opium daily, I could not have done 
otherwise. Whether, indeed, afterwards, I might not 
have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when 
it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, 
and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I 
did make might not have been carried much further, 
and my gradual re-conquests of ground lost might not 
have been followed up much more energetically, — these 
are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might 
make out a case of palliation ; but — shall I speak ingen- 
uously ? — I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, 
that I am too much of an Eudsemonist ; I hanker too 
much after a state of happiness, both for myself and 
others ; I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, 
with an eye of sufficient firmness ; and am little capa- 
ble of encountering present pain for the sake of any 
reversionary benefit. On some other matters, I can 
agree with the gentlemen in the cotton trade* at Man- 
chester in affecting the Stoic philosophy ; but not in 
this. Here I take the liberty of an Eclectic philosopher, 
and I look out for some courteous and considerate sect 
that will condescend more to the infirm condition of an 

* A handsome news-room, of which I was very politely made free 
in passing through Manchester, by several gentlemen of that place, 
is called, I think, The Porch; whence I, who am a stranger in Man- 
chester, inferred that the subscribers meant to profess themselves 
followers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that this is a mis- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. iD 

opium-eater ; that are " sweet men, " as Chaucer says, 
M to give absolution," and will show some conscience 
in the penances they inflict, and the efforts of absti- 
nence they exact from poor sinners like myself. An 
inhuman moralist I can no more endure in my nervous 
state than opium that has not been boiled. At any 
rate, he, who summons me to send out a large freight 
of self-denial and mortification upon any cruising voy- 
age of moral improvement, must make it clear to my 
understanding that the concern is a hopeful one. At 
my time of life, (six-and-thirty years of age,) it cannot 
be supposed that I have much energy to spare ; in fact, 
I find it all little enough for the intellectual labors I have 
on my hands ; and, therefore, let no man expect to 
frighten me by a few hard words into embarking any 
part of it upon desperate adventures of morality. 

Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the 
struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned ; and from 
this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and 
confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any 
particular day he had or had not taken opium, would 
be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, 
or the heart fulfilled its functions. You understand 
now, reader, what I am ; and you are by this time 
aware, that no old gentleman, " with a snow-white 
beard," will have any chance of persuading me to sur- 
render " the little golden receptacle of the pernicious 
drug." No; I give notice to all, whether moralists or 
surgeons, that whatever be their pretensions and skill in 
their respective lines of practice, they must not hope for 
any countenance from me, if they think to begin by 
any savage proposition for a Lent or Ramadan of absti- 



76 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

nence from opium. This, then, being all fully under- 
stood between us, we shall in future sail before the wind. 
Now, then, reader, from 1813, where all this time we 
have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you 
please, and walk forward about three years more. Now 
draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new 
character. 

If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would 
tell us what had been the happiest day in his life, and 
the why and the wherefore, I suppose that we should 
all cry out, Hear him ! hear him ! As to the happiest 
day, that must be very difficult for any wise man to 
name ; because any event, that could occupy so dis- 
tinguished a place in a man's retrospect of his life, or 
be entitled to have shed a special felicity on any one 
day, ought to be of such an enduring character, as that 
(accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the 
same felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on many 
years together. To the happiest lustrum, however, or 
even to the happiest year, it may be allowed to any man 
to point without discountenance from wisdom. This 
year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have 
now reached ; though it stood, I confess, as a parenthe- 
sis between years of a gloomier character. It was a 
year of brilliant water, (to speak after the manner of 
jewellers,) set, as it were, and insulated, in the gloom 
and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may 
sound, I had a little before this time descended sudden- 
ly, and without any considerable effort, from three 
hundred and twenty grains of opium (i. e. eight* thou- 



* I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to 
one grain of opium which, I believe, is the common estimate. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 77 

sand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, or 
one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, 
the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon 
my brain, like some black vapors that I have seen roll 
away from the summits of mountains, drew off in one 
day ; passed off with its murky banners as simulta- 
neously as a ship that has been stranded, and is floated 
off by a spring tide, — 

That moveth altogether, if it move at all. 

Now, then, I was again happy : I now took only one 
thousand drops of laudanum per day, and what was 
that ? A latter spring had come to close up the season 
of youth : my brain performed its functions as healthily 
as ever before. I read Kant again, and again I under- 
stood him, or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of 
pleasure expanded themselves to all around me ; and 
if any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, 
had been announced to me in my unpretending cot- 
tage, I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a 
reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever 
else was wanting to a wise man's happiness, of lauda- 
num I would have given him as much as he wished, 
and in a golden cup. And, by the way, now that I 
speak of giving laudanum away, I remember, about 
this time, a little incident, which I mention, because, 



However, as both may be considered variable quantities, (the crude 
opium varying much in strength, and the tincture still more,) I sup- 
pose that no infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. 
Tea-spoons vary as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones 
hold about one "hundred drops : so that eight thousand drops are 
about eighty times a tea-spoonful. The reader sees how much 1 
kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance. 



78 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

trifling as it was, the reader will soon meet it again in 
my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than 
could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my 
door. What business a Malay could have to transact 
amongst English mountains, I cannot conjecture ; but 
possibly he was on his road to a sea-port about forty 
miles distant. 

The servant who opened the door to him was a 
young girl born and bred amongst the mountains, who 
had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort: his turban, 
therefore, confounded her not a little ; and as it turned 
out that his attainments in English were exactly of the 
same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be 
an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of 
ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In 
this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning 
of her master, (and, doubtless, giving me credit for a 
knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides, 
perhaps, a few of the lunar ones,) came and gave me 
to understand that there was a sort of demon below, 
whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise 
from the house. I did not immediately go down ; but 
when I did, the group which presented itself, arranged 
as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took 
hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of 
the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the 
opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had 
ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but pannelled on 
the wall with dark wood, that from age and rubbing 
resembled oak, and looking more like a, rustic hall of 
entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay, his turban 
and loose trousers of dingy white relieved upon the 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 79 

dark pannelling ; he had placed himself nearer to the 
girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit 
of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of 
simple awe which her countenance expressed as she 
gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more 
striking picture there could not be imagined, than the 
beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fair- 
ness, together with her erect and independent attitude, 
contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Ma- 
lay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by marine 
air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish ges- 
tures, and adorations. Half hidden by the ferocious- 
looking Malay, was a little child from a neighboring 
cottage, who had crept in after him, and was now in 
the act of reverting its head and gazing upwards at the 
turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst with one 
hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for 
protection. 

My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remark- 
ably extensive, being, indeed, confined to two words, — 
the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for opium, 
(madjoon,) which I have learnt from Anastasius. And, 
as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's 
Mithridates, which might have helped me to a few 
words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad ; 
considering that, of such language as I possessed, the 
Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically 
nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped me in a 
devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was 
Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with my 
neighbors; for the Malay had no means of betraying 
the secret. He lay down upon the floor for about an 



80 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

hour, and then pursued his journey. On his departure, 
I presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as an 
Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar ; 
and the expression of his face convinced me that it was. 
Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consterna- 
tion when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his 
mouth, and (in the school-boy phrase) bolt the whole, 
divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quan- 
tity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses, 
and I felt some alarm for the poor creature ; but what 
could be done ? I had given him the opium in com- 
passion for his solitary life, on recollecting that, if he 
had travelled on foot from London, it must be nearly 
three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought 
with any human being. I could not think of violating 
the laws of hospitality by having him seized and 
drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into 
a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some 
English idol. No ; there was clearly no help for it. 
He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious ; but 
as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I 
became convinced that he was used * to opium, and 

* This, however, is not a necessary conclusion ; the varieties of 
effect produced by opium ou different constitutions are infinite. A 
London magistrate (Harriott's " Struggles through Life," vol. iii. 
p. 391, third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his 
trying laudanum for the gout, he took forty drops, the next night 
sixty, and on the fifth night eighty, without any effect whatever ; 
and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country 
surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle ; and 
in my projected medical treatise on opium, which I will publish, 
provided the College of Surgeons will pay me for enlightening their 
benighted understandings upon this subject, I will relate it; but it 
is far too good a story to be published gratis. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 81 

that I must have done him the service I designed, by 
giving him one night of respite from the pains of 
wandering. 

This incident I have digressed to mention, because 
this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he 
assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected 
with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon 
my dreams, and brought other Malays with him worse 
than himself, that ran " a-muck " * at me, and led me 
into a world of troubles. But to quit this episode, and 
to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I have 
said already, that on a subject so important to us all as 
happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man's 
experience or experiments, even though he were but a 
ploughboy, who cannot be supposed to have ploughed 
very deep into such an intractable soil as that of human 
pains and pleasures, or to have conducted his researches 
upon any very enlightened principles. But I, who have 
taken happiness, both in a solid and a liquid shape, both 
boiled and unboiled, both East India and Turkey, — who 
have conducted my experiments upon this interesting 
subject with a sort of galvanic battery, — and have, for 
the general benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as 
it were, with the poison of eight hundred drops of 
laudanum per day, (just for the same reason as a 
French surgeon inoculated himself lately with a cancer, 
— an English one, twenty years ago, with plague, — 
and a third, I know not of what nation, with hydro- 
phobia,) — I, it will be admitted, must surely know what 



* See the common accounts, in any Eastern traveller or voyager, 
of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, 
or are reduced to desperation by ill luck at gambling. 
6 



82 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

happiness is, if any body does. And therefore I will 
here lay down an analysis of happiness ; and as the 
most interesting mode of communicating it, I will give 
it, not didactically, but wrapped up and involved in a 
picture of one evening, as I spent every evening during 
the intercalary year when laudanum, though taken 
daily, was to me no more than the elixir of pleasure. 
This done, I shall quit the subject of happiness alto- 
gether, and pass to a very different one, — ■ the pains of 
opium. 

Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen 
miles from any town ; no spacious valley, but about 
two miles long by three quarters of a mile in average 
width, — the benefit of which provision is, that all the 
families resident within its circuit will compose, as it 
were, one larger household personally familiar to your 
eye, and more or less interesting to your affections. 
Let the mountains be real mountains, between three and 
four thousand feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, 
not (as a witty author has it) " a cottage with a double 
coach-house ; " let it be, in fact, (for I must abide by 
the actual scene.) a white cottage, embowered with 
flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of 
flowers upon the walls, and clustering round the win- 
dows through all the months of spring, summer, and 
autumn ; beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending 
with jasmine. Let it, however, not be spring, nor 
summer, nor autumn ; but winter, in his sternest shape. 
This is a most important point in the science of happi- 
ness. And I am surprised to see people overlook it, 
and think it matter of congratulation that winter is 
going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 83 

On the contrary, I put up a petition, annually, for as 

much snow, hail, frost, or storm of one kind or other, 

as the skies can possibly afford us. Surely every body 

is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter 

fireside, candles at four o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, 

a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in 

ample draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain 

are raging audibly without, 

And at the doors and windows seem to call 
As heaven and earth they would together mell ; 
Yet the least entrance find they none at all : 
Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall. 

CASTLE OF INDOLENCE. 

All these are items in the description of a winter 
evening, which must surely be familiar to every body 
born in a high latitude. And it is evident that most of 
these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very low 
temperature of the atmosphere to produce them : they 
are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather 
stormy or inclement, in some way or other. I am not 
" 'particular" as people say, whether it be snow, or 

black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr, says,) 

" you may lean your back against it like a post." I 
can put up even with rain, provided that it rains cats 
and dogs ; but something of the sort I must have ; and 
if I have not, I think myself in a manner ill used : for 
why am I called on to pay so heavily for winter, in 
coals, and candles, and various privations that will occur 
even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good 
of its kind ? No : a Canadian winter for my money ; or 
a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor 
with the north wind in the fee-simple of his own ears. 
Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter, that I 



84 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past 
St. Thomas's day, and have degenerated into disgusting 
tendencies to vernal appearances ; — no, it must be 
divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return 
of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of Oc- 
tober to Christmas-eve, therefore, is the period during 
which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, 
enter the room with the tea-tray ; for tea, though 
ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, 
or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not sus- 
ceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will 
always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual ; 
and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a 
helium internecinum against Jonas Hanway, or any 
other impious person who should presume to disparage 
it. But here, to save myself the trouble of too much 
verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give 
him directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do 
not like white cottages, unless a good deal weather- 
stained ; but as the reader now understands that it is a 
winter night, his services will not be required except 
for the inside of the house. 

Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, 
and not more than seven and a half feet high. This, 
reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, 
the drawing-room ; but being contrived " a double debt 
to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed the library ; 
for it happens that books are the only article of property 
in which I am richer than my neighbors. Of these I 
have about five thousand, collected gradually since my 
eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as 
you can into this room. Make it populous with books ; 



ENGLISH OIPUM-EATER. 85 

and, furthermore, paint me a good fire ; and furniture, 
plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of 
a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table ; and 
(as it is clear that no creature can come to see one 
such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers 
on the tea-tray ; and, if you know how to paint such a 
thing symbolically, or otherwise, paint me an eternal 
tea-pot, — eternal d parte ante, and a parte post ; for 
I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four 
in the morning. And, as it is very unpleasant to make 
tea, or to pour it out for one's self, paint me a lovely 
young woman, sitting at the table. Paint her arms 
like Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's ; — but no, 
dear M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy 
power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so 
perishable as mere personal beauty ; or that the witch- 
craft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any 
earthly pencil. Pass, then, my good painter, to some- 
thing more within its power ; and the next article 
brought forward should naturally be myself, — a picture 
of the Opium-eater, with his " little golden receptacle 
of the pernicious drug " lying beside him on the table. 
As to the opium, I have no objection to see a picture of 
that, though I would rather see the original ; you may 
paint it, if you choose ; but I apprize you, that no 
"little" receptacle would, even in 1816, answer my 
purpose, who was at a distance from the " stately Pan- 
theon," and all druggists (mortal or otherwise). No : 
you may as well paint the real receptacle, which was 
not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine- 
decanter as possible. Into this you may put a quart of 
ruby-colored laudanum ; that, and a book of German 



86 CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 

metaphysics placed by its side, will sufficiently attest 
my being in the neighborhood ; but as to myself, there 
I demur. I admit, that naturally, I ought to occupy 
the foreground of the picture ; that being the hero of 
the piece, or (if you choose) the criminal at the bar, 
my body should be had into court. This seems reason- 
able ; but why should I confess, on this point, to a 
painter? or why confess at all? If the public (into 
whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my 
confessions, and not into any painter's) should chance 
to have framed some agreeable picture for itself, of the 
Opium-eater's exterior, — should have ascribed to him, 
romantically, an elegant person, or a handsome face, 
why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a 
delusion, — pleasing both to the public and to me ? No : 
paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy ; and, 
as a painter's fancy should teem with beautiful cre- 
ations, I cannot fail, in that way, to be a gainer. And 
now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories 
of my condition, as it stood about 1816- 1817 ; up to 
the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have 
been a happy man ; and the elements of that happiness 
I have endeavored to place before you, in the above 
sketch of the interior of a scholar's library, — in a cot- 
tage among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening. 
But now farewell, a long farewell to happiness, 
winter or summer ! farewell to smiles and laughter ! 
farewell to peace of mind ! farewell to hope and to 
tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of 
sleep ! For more than three years and a half I am sum- 
moned away from these ; I am now arrived at an Iliad 
of woes ; for I have now to record 



THE PAINS OF OPIUM. 



as when some great painter dips 

His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. 

shelley's revolt of islam. 

Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must 
request your attention to a brief explanatory note on 
three points : 

1. For several reasons, I have not been able to com- 
pose the notes for this part of my narrative into any 
regular and connected shape. I give the notes dis- 
jointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up 
from memory. Some of them point to their own date ; 
some I have dated ; and some are undated. Whenever 
it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the 
natural or chronological order, I have not scrupled to 
do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes 
in the past tense. Few of the notes, perhaps, were 
written exactly at the period of time to which they 
relate ; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the 
impressions were such that they can never fade from 
my mind. Much has been omitted. I could not, 
without effort, constrain myself to the task of either 
recalling, or constructing into a regular narrative, the 



88 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

whole burden of horrors which lies upon my brain. 
This feeling, partly, I plead in excuse, and partly that I 
am now in London, and am a helpless sort of person, 
who cannot even arrange his own papers without 
assistance ; and I am separated from the hands 
which are wont to perform for me the offices of an 
amanuensis. 

2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential 
and communicative of my own private history. It may 
be so. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud? 
and follow my own humors, than much to consider who 
is listening to me ; and, if I stop to consider what is 
proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon 
come to doubt whether any part at all is proper. The 
fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty 
years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to 
those who will be interested about me hereafter ; and 
wishing to have some record of a time, the entire 
history of which no one can know but myself, I do it 
as fully as I am able with the efforts I am now capable 
of making, because I know not whether I can ever find 
time to do it again. 

3. It will occur to you often to ask, Why did I not 
release myself from the horrors of opium, by leaving 
it off, or diminishing it ? To this I must answer briefly ; 
it might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations 
of opium too easily ; it cannot be supposed that any 
man can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may 
be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable to 
reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed 
the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the 
first to beg me to desist. But could not I have reduced 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 89 

it a drop a day, or by adding water, have bisected or 
trisected a drop ? A thousand drops bisected would 
thus have taken nearly six years to reduce ; and that 
they would certainly not have answered. But this is a 
common mistake of those who know nothing of opium 
experimentally ; I appeal to those who do, whether it is 
not always foundthat down to a certain point it can be 
reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that, after that 
point, further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes, 
say many thoughtless persons, who know not what they 
are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and 
dejection for a few days. I answer, no ; there is 
nothing like low spirits ; on the contrary, the mere 
animal spirits are uncommonly raised ; the pulse is 
improved ; the health is better. It is not there that the 
suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the sufferings 
caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable 
irritation of stomach, (which surely is not much like 
dejection,) accompanied by intense perspirations, and 
feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without 
more space at my command. 

I shall now enter " in medias res," and shall antici- 
pate, from a time when my opium pains might be said 
to be at their acme, an account of their palsying effects 
on the intellectual faculties. 

My studies have now been long interrupted. I can- 
not read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a 
moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud sometimes for 
the pleasure of others ; because reading is an accom- 
plishment of mine ; and, in the slang use of the word 
accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attain- 
ment, almost the only one I possess ; and formerly, if 



90 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

I had any vanity at all connected with any .endowment 
or attainment of mine, it was with this ; for I had 
observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players 

are the worst readers of all ; reads vilely ; and 

Mrs. , who is so celebrated, can read nothing well 

but dramatic compositions ; Milton she cannot read 
sufferably. People in general either read poetry 
without any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty 
of nature, and read not like scholars. Of late, if I have 
felt moved by any thing in books, it has been by the 
grand lamentations of Sampson Agonistes, or the 
great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise 
Regained, when read aloud by myself. A young lady 
sometimes comes and drinks tea with us ; at her request 

and M.'s I now and then read W 's poems to them. 

(YV\, by the bye, is the only poet I ever met who could 
read his own verses ; often indeed he reads admirably.) 
For nearly two years I believe that I read no book 
but one ; and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a 
great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was. 
The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as 
I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But my 
proper vocation, as I well knew, was the exercise of 
the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part, 
analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued 
by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, 
for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c, were all be- 
come insupportable to me ; I shrunk from them with a 
sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave 
me an anguish the greater from remembering the time 
when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight ; 
and for this further reason, because I had devoted the 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 91 

labor of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, 
blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of 
constructing one single work, to which I had presumed 
to give the title of an unfinished work of Spinosa's, viz. 
De Emendatione Humani Intellectus. This was now 
lying locked up, as by frost, like any Spanish bridge or 
aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the re- 
sources of the architect ; and, instead of surviving me 
as a monument of wishes at least, and aspirations, and 
a life of labor dedicated to the exaltation of human 
nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to 
promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a 
memorial to my children, of hopes defeated, of baffled 
efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of founda- 
tions laid that were never to support a superstructure, 
of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this 
state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned my 
attention to political economy ; my understanding, 
which formerly had been as active and restless as a 
hyena, could not, I suppose, (so long as I lived at all,) 
sink into utter lethargy ; and political economy offers 
this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is 
eminently an organic science, (no part, that is to say, 
but what acts on the whole, as the whole again reacts 
on each part,) yet the several parts may be detached 
and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration 
of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my 
knowledge ; and my understanding had been for too 
many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, 
and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of 
the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern econo- 
mists. I had been led in 1811 to look into loads of 



92 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

books and pamphlets on many branches of economy ; 
and, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters 
from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary de- 
bates. I saw that these were generally the very dregs 
and rinsings of the human intellect ; and that any man 
of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with scho- 
lastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of 
modern economists, and throttle them between heaven 
and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fun- 
gous heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, in 
1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ri- 
cardo's book ; and, recurring to my own prophetic 
anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this 
science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, 
" Thou art the man !" Wonder and curiosity were 
emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I won- 
dered once more : I wondered at myself that I could 
once again be stimulated to the effort of reading ; and 
much more I wondered at the book. Had this pro- 
found work been really written in England during the 
nineteenth century ? Was it possible ? I supposed 
thinking* had been extinct in England. Could it be 
that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, 
but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had 
accomplished what all the universities of Europe, and a 
century of thought, had failed even to advance by one 

* The reader must remember what I here mean by thinking ; be- 
cause, else, this would be a very presumptuous expression. England, 
©f late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of 
creative and combining thought ; but there is a sad dearth of mas- 
culine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name 
has lately told us, that he is obliged to quit even mathematics, for 
want of encouragement. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. VS 

hair's breadth ? All other writers had been crushed and 
overlaid by the enormous weights of facts and docu- 
ments ; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from the 
understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light 
into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had con- 
structed what had been but a collection of tentative 
discussions into a science of regular proportions, now 
first standing on an eternal basis. 

Thus did one simple work of a profound under- 
standing, avail to give me a pleasure and an activity 
which I had not known for years ; — it roused me even 
to write, or, at least, to dictate what M. wrote for me. 
It seemed to me that some important truths had es- 
caped even " the inevitable eye" of Mr. Ricardo ; and, 
as these were, for the most part, of such a nature that I 
could express or illustrate them more briefly and ele- 
gantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy 
and loitering diction of economists, the whole would 
not have filled a pocket-book ; and being so brief, with 
M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as 
I was of all general exertion, I drew up my Prolego- 
mena to all Future Systems of Political Economy. I 
hope it will not be found redolent of opium ; though, 
indeed, to most people, the subject itself is a sufficient 
opiate. 

This exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, 
as the sequel showed ; for I designed to publish my 
work. Arrangements were made at a provincial press, 
about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An ad- 
ditional compositor was retained, for some days, on this 
account. The work was even twice advertised ; and 
I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfilment of my 



94 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

intention. But I had a preface to write ; and a dedi- 
cation, which I wished to make a splendid one, to Mr. 
Ricardo. I found myself quite unable to accomplish 
all this. The arrangements were countermanded, the 
compositor dismissed, and my " prolegomena " rested 
peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified 
brother. 

I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual 
torpor, in terms that apply, more or less, to every part 
of the four years during which I was under the Circean 
spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, 
indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I 
seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter ; an 
answer of a few words, to any that I received, was the 
utmost that I could accomplish ; and often that not 
until the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on my 
writing-table. Without the aid of M, all records of 
bills paid, or to be paid, must have perished ; and my 
whole domestic economy, whatever became of Political 
Economy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion. 
I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case ; it 
is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the 
end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from 
the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the direct 
embarrassments incident to the neglect or procrasti- 
nation of each day's appropriate duties, and from the 
remorse which must often exasperate the stings of 
these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. 
The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities 
or aspirations ; he wishes and longs as earnestly as 
ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to 
be exacted by duty ; but his intellectual apprehension 



ENGLISH OriUM-EATER. 95 

of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of 
execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies 
under the weight of incubus and night-mare ; he lies in 
sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man 
forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a 
relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or 
outrage ofFered to some object of his tenderest love : — 
he curses the spells which chain him down from mo- 
tion ; he would lay down his life if he might but get 
up and walk ; but he is powerless as an infant, and 
cannot even attempt to rise. 

I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter 
confessions, to the history and journal of what took 
place in my dreams ; for these were the immediate 
and proximate cause of my acutest suffering. 

The first notice I had of any important change going 
on in this part of my physical economy, was from the 
reawaking of a state of eye generally incident to child- 
hood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not 
whether my reader is aware that many children, per- 
haps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon 
the darkness, all sorts of phantoms ; in some that 
power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye ; 
others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to 
dismiss or summon them ; or, as a child once said to 
me when I questioned him on this matter, " I can tell 
them to go, and they go ; but sometimes they come 
when I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told 
him that he had almost as unlimited a command over 
apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. 
In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty 
became positively distressing to me : at night, when I 



96 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in 
mournful pomp ; friezes of never-ending stories, that 
to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were 
stories drawn from times before GEdipus or Priam, be- 
fore Tyre, before Memphis. And, at the same time, a 
corresponding change took place in my dreams ; a 
theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within 
my brain, which presented, nightly, spectacles of more 
than earthly splendor. And the four following facts 
may be mentioned, as noticeable at this time : — 

I. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a 
sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the 
dreaming states of the brain in one point, — that what- 
soever I happened to call up and to trace by a volun- 
tary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer 
itself to my dreams ; so that I feared to exercise this 
faculty ; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that 
yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, 
so whatsoever things capable of being visually repre- 
sented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately 
shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye ; and, by 
a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once 
traced in faint and visionary colors, like writings in 
sympathetic ink, they were drawn out by the fierce 
chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendor that 
fretted my heart. 

II. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, 
were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy 
melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by 
words. I seemed every night to descend, not meta- 
phorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and 
sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 97 

seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did 
I, by waking, feel that I had reascended. This I do 
not dwell upon ; because the state of gloom which at- 
tended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to 
utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, can- 
not be approached by words. 

III. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of 
time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, land- 
scapes, &c, were exhibited in proportions so vast, as 
the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, 
and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. 
This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast 
expansion of time ; I sometimes seemed to have lived 
for seventy or one hundred years in one night ; nay, 
sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium 
passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far be- 
yond the limits of any human experience. 

IV. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten 
scenes of later years, were often revived : I could not 
be said to recollect them ; for if I had been told of 
them when waking, I should not have been able to 
acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. 
But placed as they were before me, in dreams like 
intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circum- 
stances and accompanying feelings, I recognized them 
instantaneously. I was once told by a near rela- 
tive of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a 
river, and being on the very verge of death but for the 
critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a 
moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed 
before her simultaneously as in a mirror ; and she had 
a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the 

7 



98 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

whole and every part. This, from some opium expe- 
riences of mine, I can believe ; I have, indeed, seen 
the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and 
accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is 
true, viz. that the dread book of account, which the 
scriptures speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each 
individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there 
is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind ; 
a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil 
between our present consciousness and the secret in< 
scriptions on the mind ; accidents of the same sort will 
also rend away this veil ; but alike, whether veiled or 
unveiled, the inscription remains for ever ; just as the 
stars seem to withdraw before the common light of 
day, whereas in fact we all know that it is the light 
which is drawn over them as a veil ; and that they are 
waiting to be revealed, when the obscuring daylight 
shall have withdrawn. 

Having noticed these four facts as memorably dis- 
tinguishing my dreams from those of health, I shall 
now cite a case illustrative of the first fact ; and shall 
then cite any others that I remember, either in their 
chronological order, or any other that may give them 
more effect as pictures to the reader. 

I had been in youth, and even since, for occasional 
amusement, a great reader of Livy, whom, I confess, 
that I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other of 
the Roman historians ; and I had often felt as most 
solemn and appalling sounds, and most emphatically 
representative of the majesty of the Roman people, the 
two words so often occurring in Livy — Consul Roma- 
nus ; especially when the consul is introduced in his 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 99 

military character. I mean to say, that the words 
king, sultan, regent, &c, or any other titles of those 
who emhody in their own persons the collective majesty 
of a great people, had less power over my reverential 
feelings. I had also, though no great reader of history, 
made myself minutely and critically familiar with one 
period of English history, viz., the period of the Par- 
liamentary War, having been attracted by the moral 
grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by the 
many interesting memoirs which survive those unquiet 
times. Both these parts of my lighter reading, having 
furnished me often with matter of reflection, now fur- 
nished me with matter for my dreams. Often I used 
to see, after painting upon the blank darkness, a sort 
of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and 
perhaps a festival and dances. And I heard it said, or 
I said to myself, " These are English ladies from the 
unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and 
daughters of those who met in peace, and sat at the 
same tables, and were allied by marriage or by blood ; 
and yet, after a certain day in August, 1642, never 
smiled upon each other again, nor met but in the field 
of battle ; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at 
Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, 
and washed away in blood the memory of ancient 
m friendship." The ladies danced, and looked as lovely 
as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my 
dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two 
centuries. This pageant would suddenly dissolve ; 
and, at a clapping of hands, would be heard the heart- 
quaking sound of Consul Romanus ; and immediately 
came " sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus 



100 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

or Marius, girt round by a company of centurions, with 
the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by 
the alalagmos of the Roman legions. 

Many years ago, when I was looking over PiranesPs 
Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing 
by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called 
his Dreams, and which record the scenery of his own 
visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them 
(I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's ac- 
count) represented vast gothic halls ; on the floor of 
which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, 
cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c, expressive of 
enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. 
Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a 
staircase ; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was 
Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further, and 
you perceive it come to a sudden, abrupt termination, 
without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards 
to him who had reached the extremity, except into the 
depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, 
you suppose, at least, that his labors must in some way 
terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a 
second flight of stairs still higher ; on which again 
Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very 
brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a 
still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld ; and again is 
poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labors ; and so on, 
until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in 
the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of 
endless growth and self-reproduction did my architec- 
ture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of my 
malady, the splendors of my dreams were indeed 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 101 

chiefly architectural ; and I beheld such pomp of cities 
and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking 
eye, unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet 
I cite the part of a passage which describes, as an ap- 
pearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many 
of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep : — 

The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
Was of a mighty city — boldly say 
A wilderness of building, sinking lar 
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, 
Far sinking into splendor — without end ! 
Fabric it seemed of diamond, and of gold, 
With alabaster domes and silver spires, 
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
Uplifted ; here, serene pavilions bright. 
In avenues disposed ; their towers begirt 
With battlements that on their restless fronts 
Bore stars — illumination of all gems ! 
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought 
Upon the dark materials of the storm 
Now pacified ; on them, and on the coves, 
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto 
The vapors had receded — taking there 
Their station under a cerulean sky, &c. &c. 

The sublime circumstance, — " battlements that on 
their restless fronts bore stars," — might have been 
copied from my architectural dreams, for it often oc- 
curred. We hear it reported of Dryden, and of Fuseli 
in modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw 
meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams : how 
much better for such a purpose to have eaten opium, 
which yet 1 do not remember that any poet is recorded 
to have done, except the dramatist Shad well ; and in 
ancient days, Homer is, I think, rightly reputed to 
have known the virtues of opium. 



102 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes, 
and silvery expanses of water : these haunted me so 
much, that I feared (though possibly it will appear lu- 
dicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state or 
tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to 
use a metaphysical word) oljeciive, and the sentient 
organ project itself as its own object. For two months 
I suffered greatly in my head, — a part of my bodily 
structure which had hitherto been so clear from all 
touch or taint of weakness (physically, I mean) that I 
used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his 
stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my 
person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or 
any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused 
by my own folly. However, I got over this attack, 
though it must have been verging on something very 
dangerous. 

The waters now changed their character, — from 
translucent lakes, shining like mirrors, they now be- 
came seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous 
change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, 
through many months, promised an abiding torment ; 
and, in fact, it never left me until the winding up of 
my case. Hitherto the human face had often mixed in 
my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special 
power of tormenting. But now that which I have 
called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold 
itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be 
answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was 
that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human 
face began to appear ; the sea appeared paved with 
innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens ; faces, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 103 

imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by 
thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries : 
my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed, and surged 
with the ocean. 

May, 1818. — The Malay had been a fearful enemy 
for months. I have been every night, through his 
means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not 
whether others share in my feelings on this point ; but 
I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego 
England, and to live in China, and among Chinese 
manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go 
mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of 
them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in 
general, is the seat of awful images and associations. 
As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a 
dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But 
there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the 
wild, barbarous and capricious superstitions of Africa, 
or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way 
that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, 
and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere 
antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, 
modes of faith, &c, is so impressive, that to me the 
vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of 
youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to 
me an antediluvian man renewed. Even English- 
men, though not bred in any knowledge of such insti- 
tutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity 
of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, 
through such immemorial tracts of time ; nor can any 
man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges, or the 
Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that 



104 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, 
the part of the earth most swarming with human life, 
the great ojjicina gentium. Man is a weed in those 
regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enor- 
mous population of Asia has always been cast, give a 
further sublimity to the feelings associated with all ori- 
ental names or images. In China, over and above what 
it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, 1 am 
terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the 
barrier of utter abhorrence, and want of sympathy, 
placed between us by feelings deeper than I can ana- 
lyze. I could sooner live with lunatics, or brute ani- 
mals. All this, and much more than I can say, or 
have time to say, the reader must enter into, before he 
can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these 
dreams of oriental imagery, and mythological tortures, 
impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of 
tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together 
all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, 
usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical 
regions, and assembled them together in China or In- 
dostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt 
and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, 
hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by 
paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was 
fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms : 
I was the idol ; I was the priest ; 1 was worshipped ; 
I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama 
through all the forests of Asia : Vishnu hated me ; 
Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis 
and Osiris : I had done a deed, they said, which the 
ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried, for a 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 105 

thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and 
sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal 
pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by 
crocodiles ; and laid, confounded with all unutterable 
slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. 

I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my 
oriental dreams, which always filled me with such 
amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror 
seemed absorbed, for a while, in sheer astonishment. 
Sooner or later, came a reflux of feeling that swallowed 
up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in ter- 
ror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. 
Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim 
sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and 
infinity that drove me into an oppression as of madness. 
Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two slight 
exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror 
entered. All before had been moral and spiritual ter- 
rors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or 
snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed 
crocodile became to me the object of more horror than 
almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him ; 
and (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for 
centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in 
Chinese houses with cane tables, &c. All the feet of 
the tables, sofas, &c, soon became instinct with life : the 
abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, 
looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repe- 
titions ; and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so 
often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that 
many times the very same dream was broken up in the 
very same way : I heard gentle voices speaking to me, 



106 CONFESSIONS OF AN 



(I hear every thing when I am sleeping,) and instantly 
I awoke : it was broad noon, and my children were 
standing, hand in hand, at my bedfl^come to show 
me their colored shoes, or new frocljjs^ or to let me 
see them dressed for going out. I protelt that so aw- 
ful was the transition from the damned crocodile, and 
the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my 
dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of 
infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of 
mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their 
faces. 

June, 1819. — I have had occasion to remark, at 
various periods of my life, that the deaths of those 
whom we love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death 
generally, is (cceteris paribus) more affecting in sum- 
mer than in any other season of the year. And the 
reasons are these three, I think : first, that the visible 
heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, 
and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite ; 
the clouds by which chiefly the eye expounds the dis- 
tance of the blue pavilion stretched over our heads, are 
in summer more voluminous, massed, and accumulated 
in far grander and more towering piles : secondly, the 
light and the appearances of the declining and the set- 
ting sun are much more fitted to be types and charac- 
ters of the infinite : and, thirdly, (which is the main 
reason) the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life 
naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the 
antagonist thought of death, and the wintry sterility of 
the grave. For it may be observed, generally, that 
wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a 
law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 107 

repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On 
these accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish 
the thought of death when I am walking alone in the 
endless days of summer ; and any particular death, if 
not more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obsti- 
nately and besiegingly in that season. Perhaps this 
cause, and a slight incident which I omit, might have 
been the immediate occasions of the following dream, 
to which, however, a predisposition must always have 
existed in my mind ; but having been once roused, it 
never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic vari- 
eties, which often suddenly reunited, and composed 
again the original dream. 

I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May, that 
it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the 
morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the 
door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the 
very scene which could really be commanded from 
that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnized 
by the power of dreams. There were the same moun- 
tains, and the same lovely valley at their feet ; but the 
mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and 
there was interspace far larger between them of mea- 
dows and forest lawns ; the hedges were rich with 
white roses ; and no living creature was to be seen, 
excepting that in the green church-yard there were 
cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and 
particularly round about the grave of a child whom I 
had tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a 
little before sunrise in the same summer, when that 
child died. I gazed upon the well-known scene, and I 
said aloud (as I thought) to myself, " It yet wants 



I OS CONFESSIONS OF AN 

much of sunrise ; and it is Easter Sunday ; and that is 
the day on which they celebrate the first fruits of res- 
urrection. I will walk abroad ; old griefs shall be 
forgotten to-day ; for the air is cool and still, and the 
hills are high, and stretch away to heaven ; and the 
forest-glades are as quiet as the church-yard ; and with 
the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead, and 
then I shall be unhappy no longer." And I turned, as 
if to open my garden gate ; and immediately I saw 
upon the left a scene far different ; but which yet the 
power of dreams had reconciled into harmony with the 
other. The scene was an oriental one ; and there also 
it was Easter Sunday, and very early in the morning. 
And at a vast distance were visible, as a stain upon the 
horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great city — an 
image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood 
from some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot 
from me, upon a stone, and shaded by Judean palms, 
there sat a woman ; and I looked, and it was — Ann ! 
She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly ; and I said to 
her at length, " So, then, I have found you at last." 
I waited ; but she answered me not a word. Her face 
was the same as when I saw it last, and yet again how 
different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamp-light 
fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips 
(lips, Ann, that to me were not polluted), her eyes 
were streaming with tears ; her tears were now wiped 
away ; she seemed more beautiful than she was at that 
time, but in all other points the same, and not older. 
Her lpoks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of 
expression ; and I now gazed upon her with some awe, 
but suddenly her countenance grew dim, and, turning 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 109 

to the mountains, I perceived vapors rolling between 
us ; in a moment, all had vanished ; thick darkness 
came on ; and in the twinkling of an eye I was far 
away from mountains, and by lamp-light in Oxford 
Street, walking again with Ann — just as we walked 
seventeen years before, when we were both children. 

As a final specimen, I cite one of a different charac- 
ter, from 1820. 

The dream commenced with a music which now I 
I often heard in dreams — a music of preparation and 
of awakening suspense ; a music like the opening of 
the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the 
feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, 
and the tread of innumerable armies. The mo'rning 
was come of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of 
final hope for human nature, then suffering some mys- 
terious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. 
Somewhere, I knew not where — somehow, I knew 
not how — by some beings, I knew not whom — a 
battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, — was evolv- 
ing like a great drama, or piece of music ; with which 
my sympathy was the more insupportable from my 
confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its 
possible issue. 1, as is usual in dreams, (where, of 
necessity, we make ourselves central to every move- 
ment,) had the power, and yet had not the power, to 
decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to 
will it ; and yet again had not the power, for the 
weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppres- 
sion of inexpiable guilt. " Deeper than ever plummet 
sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the 
passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake ; 



110 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had 
pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sud- 
den alarms ; hurryings to and fro ; trepidations of innu- 
merable fugitives. I knew not whether from the good 
cause or the bad ; darkness and lights ; tempest and 
human faces ; and at last, with the sense that all was 
lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all 
the world to me, and but a moment allowed, — and 
clasped hands, and heart breaking partings, and then 
— everlasting farewells ! and, with a sigh, such as the 
caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother ut- 
tered the abhorred name of death, the sound was rever- 
berated — everlasting farewells ! and again, and yet 
again reverberated — everlasting farewells ! 

And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud — "I will 
sleep no more ! " 

But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative 
which has already extended to an unreasonable length. 
Within more spacious limits, the materials which I 
have used might have been better unfolded ; and much 
which I have not used might have been added with 
effect. Perhaps, however, enough has been given. It 
now remains that I should say something of the way in 
which this conflict of horrors was finally brought to its 
crisis. The reader is already aware, (from a passage 
near the beginning of the introduction to the first part) 
that the opium-eater has, in some way or other, " un- 
wound, almost to its final links, the accursed chain 
which bound him." By what means ? To have nar- 
rated this, according to the original intention, would 
have far exceeded the space which can now be al- 
lowed. It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. Ill 

for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view of the 
case, have been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by 
any such unaffecting details, the impression of the his- 
tory itself, as an appeal to the prudence and the con- 
science of the yet unconfirmed opium-eater, or even 
(though a very inferior consideration) to injure its ef- 
fect as a composition. The interest of the judicious 
reader will not attach itself chiefly to the subject of 
the fascinating spells, but to the fascinating power. 
Not the opium-eater, but the opium is the true hero of 
the tale, and the legitimate centre on which the in- 
terest revolves. The object was to display the marvel- 
lous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or for 
pain : if that is done, the action of the piece has closed. 
However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the 
contrary, will persist in asking what became of the 
opium-eater, and in what state he now is, I answer for 
him thus : The reader is aware that opium had long 
ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure ; i 
was solely by the tortures connected with the attemp 
to abjure it, that it kept its hold. Yet, as other tor 
tures, no less it may be thought, attended the non-abju 
ration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was left 
and that might as well have been adopted, which, how 
ever terrific in itself, held out a prospect of final resto 
ration to happiness. This appears true ; but good 
logic gave the author no strength to act upon it. How- 
ever, a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis 
for other objects still dearer to him, and which will 
always be far dearer to him than his life, even now that it 
is again a happy one. I saw that I must die, if I con- 
tinued the opium : I determined, therefore, if that 



] 12 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

should be required, to die in throwing it off. How 
much I was at that time taking I cannot say ; for the 
opium which I used had been purchased for me by a 
friend, who afterwards refused to let me pay him ; so 
that I could not ascertain even what quantity I had 
used within a year. I apprehend, however, that I took 
it very irregularly, and that I varied from about fifty or 
sixty grains, to one hundred and fifty a day. My first 
task was to reduce it to forty, to thirty, and as fast as 1 
could, to twelve grains. 

I triumphed ; but think not, reader, that therefore 
my sufferings were ended ; nor think of me as of one 
sitting in a dejected state. Think of me as of one, 
even when four months had passed, still agitated, 
writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered ; and much, 
perhaps, in the situation of him who has been racked, 
as I collect the torments of that state from the affecting 
account of them left by the most innocent sufferer * (of 
the time of James I.) Meantime, I derived no benefit 
from any medicine, except one prescribed to me by an 
Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, viz. ammoni- 
ated tincture of valerian. Medical account, therefore, 
of my emancipation, I have not much to give ; and 
even that little, as managed by a man so ignorant of 
medicine as myself, would probably tend only to mis- 
lead. At all events, it would be misplaced in this situ- 
ation. The moral of the narrative is addressed to the 
opium-eater ; and therefore, of necessity, limited in its 
application. If he is taught to fear and tremble, enough 

* William Lithgow ; his book (Travels, &c.) is ill and pedanti- 
cally written ; but the account of his own suffering's on the rack at 
Malaga is overpoweringly affecting. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 113 

has been effected. But he may say, that the issue of 
my case is at least a proof that opium, after a seven- 
teen years' use, and an eight years 1 abuse of its pow- 
ers, may still be renounced ; and that he may chance 
to bring to the task greater energy than I did, or that 
with a stronger constitution than mine he may obtain 
the same results with less. This may be true ; 1 
would not presume to measure the efforts of other men 
by my own. [ heartily wish him more energy ; I wish 
him the same success. Nevertheless, I had motives 
external to myself which he may unfortunately want ; 
and these supplied me with conscientious supports, 
which mere personal interests might fail to supply to a 
mind debilitated by opium. 

Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful 
to be born as to die. I think it probable ; and, during 
the whole period of diminishing the opium, I had the 
torments of a man passing out of one mode of exist- 
ence into another. The issue was not death, but a 
sort of physical regeneration, and, I may add, that ever 
since, at intervals, I have had a restoration of more 
than youthful spirits, though under the pressure of diffi- 
culties, which, in a less happy state of mind, I should 
have called misfortunes. 

One memorial of my former condition still remains ; 
my dreams are not yet perfectly calm ; the dread swell 
and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided ; the 
legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not 
all departed ; my sleep is tumultuous, and like the gates 
of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from 
afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton) — 

With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms. 
8 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



The proprietors of this little work having deter- 
mined on reprinting it, some explanation seems called 
for, to account for the non-appearance of a Third Part 
promised in the London Magazine of December last ; 
and the more so, because the proprietors, under whose 
guarantee that promise was issued, might otherwise be 
implicated in the blame — little or much — attached 
to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere justice, the 
author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the 
exact amount of the guilt which he thus appropriates, 
is a very dark question to his own judgment, and not 
much illuminated by any of the masters in casuistry 
whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one 
hand, it seems generally agreed that a promise is bind- 
ing in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is 
made ; for which reason it is that we see many per- 
sons break promises without scruple that are made to a 
whole nation, who keep their faith religiously in all pri- 
vate engagements, — breaches of promise towards the 
stronger party being committed at a man's own peril : 
on the other hand, the only parties interested in the 
promises of an author are his readers, and these it is a 



118 APPENDIX. 

point of modesty in any author to believe as few as pos- 
sible ; or perhaps only one, in which case any promise 
imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shock- 
ing to think of. Casuistry dismissed however, — the 
author throws himself on the indulgent consideration of 
all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by his delay 
in the following account of his own condition from the 
end of last year, when the engagement was made, up 
nearly to the present time. For any purpose of self- 
excuse, it might be sufficient to say that intolerable 
bodily suffering had totally disabled him for almost any 
exertion of mind, more especially for such as demand 
and presuppose a pleasurable and a genial state of feel- 
ing ; but, as a case that may by possibility contribute a 
trifle to the medical history of Opium in a further stage 
of its action than can often have been brought under the 
notice of professional men, he has judged that it might 
be acceptable to some readers to have it described more 
at length. Fiat experiment urn in corpore vili is a just 
rule where there is any reasonable presumption of 
benefit to arise on a large scale. What the benefit may 
be, will admit of a doubt ; but there can be none as to 
the value of the body, for a more worthless body than 
his own, the author is free to confess, cannot be. It is 
his pride to believe, that it is the very ideal of a base, 
crazy, despicable human system, that hardly ever 
could have been meant to be seaworthy for two days 
under the ordinary storms and wear-and-tear of life ! 
and, indeed, if that were the creditable way of dis- 
posing of human bodies, he must own that he should 
almost be ashamed to bequeath his wretched structure 
to any respectable dog. But now to the case, which 



APPENDIX. 119 

for the sake of avoiding the constant recurrence of a 
cumbersome periphrasis, the author will take the liber- 
ty of giving in the first person. 



Those who have read the Confessions will have 
closed them with the impression that I had wholly 
renounced the use of opium. This impression I meant 
to convey, and that for two reasons : first, because the 
very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffer- 
ing necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of 
surveying his own case as a cool spectator, and a de- 
gree of spirits for adequately describing it, which it 
would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speak- 
ing from the station of an actual sufferer ; secondly, 
because I, who had descended from so large a quantity 
as eight thousand drops to so small a one (compara- 
tively speaking) as a quantity ranging between three 
hundred and one hundred and sixty drops, might well 
suppose that the victory was in effect achieved. In 
suffering my readers therefore to think of me as of a 
reformed opium-eater, I left no impression but what I 
shared myself, and, as may be seen, even this impres- 
sion was left to be collected from the general tone of 
the conclusion, and not' from any specific words, which 
are in no instance at variance with the literal truth. 
In no long time after that paper was written, I became 
sensible that the effort which remained would cost me 
far more energy than I had anticipated, and the neces- 
sity for making it was more apparent every month. 



1*20 APPENDIX. 

In particular, I became aware of an increasing callous- 
ness or defect of sensibility in the stomach ; and this T 
imagined might imply a schirrous state of that organ 
cither formed or forming. An eminent physician, to 
whose kindness I was at that time deeply indebted, in- 
formed me that such a termination of my case was not 
impossible, though likely to be forestalled by a different 
termination, in the event of my continuing the use of 
opium. Opium, therefore, I resolved wholly to abjure, 
as soon as I should find myself at liberty to bend my 
undivided attention and energy to this purpose. It was 
not, however, until the 24th of June last that any toler- 
able concurrence of facilities for such an attempt ar- 
rived. On that day I began my experiment, having 
previously settled in my own mind that I would not 
flinch, but would " stand up to the scratch, " under any 
possible " punishment." I must premise, that about 
one hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty 
drops had been my ordinary allowance for many 
months. Occasionally I had run up as high as five 
hundred, and once nearly to seven hundred. In re- 
peated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone 
as low as one hundred drops, but had found it impos- 
sible to stand it beyond the fourth day, which, by the 
way, I have always found more difficult to get over 
than any of the preceding three. I went off under 
easy sail — one hundred and thirty drops a day for 
three days ; on the fourth I plunged at once to eighty. 
The misery which I now suffered " took the conceit" 
out of me at once ; and for about a month I continued 
off and on about this mark ; then I sunk to sixty, and 
the next day to — none at all. This was the first 



APPENDIX. 121 

day for nearly ten years that I had existed without 
opium. I persevered in my abstinence for ninety 
hours ; i. e. upwards of half a week. Then I tool; 

ask me not how much ; say, ye severest, what 

would ye have done ? Then I abstained again ; then 
took about twenty-five drops ; then abstained ; and 
so on. 

Meantime the symptoms which attended my case 
for the first six weeks of the experiment were these : 
enormous irritability and excitement of the whole 
system ; the stomach, in particular, restored to a full 
feeling of vitality and sensibility, but often in great 
pain ; unceasing restlessness night and day ; sleep 
— I scarcely knew what it was, — three hours out of 
the twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agi- 
tated and shallow that I heard every sound that was 
near me ; lower jaw constantly swelling ; mouth ulcer- 
ated ; and many other distressing symptoms that would 
be tedious to repeat, amongst which, however, I must 
mention one, because it had never failed to accompany 
any attempt to renounce opium, — viz. violent sternu- 
tation. This now became exceedingly troublesome : 
sometimes lasting for two hours at once, and recurring 
at least twice or three times a day. I was not much 
surprised at this, on recollecting what I had some- 
where heard or read, that the membrane which lines 
the nostrils is a prolongation of that which lines the 
stomach ; whence I believe arc explained the inflam- 
matory appearances about the nostrils of dram-drink- 
ers. The sudden restoration of its original sensibility 
to the stomach expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. 
It is remarkable also, that, during the whole period of 



122 APPENDIX. 

years through which I had taken opium, I had never 
once caught cold, (as the phrase is,) nor even the 
slightest cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, 
and a cough soon after. In an unfinished fragment of 

a letter begun about this time to , I find these 

words : — " You ask me to write the . Do 

you know Beaumont and Fletcher's play of Thierry 
and Theodoret? There you will see my case^as to 
sleep ; nor is it much of an exaggeration in other fea- 
tures. I protest to you that I have a greater influx of 
thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year 
under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the 
thoughts which had been frozen up for a decade of 
years by opium, had now, according to the old fable, 
been thawed at once, such a multitude stream in upon 
me from all quarters. Yet such is my impatience and 
hideous irritability, that, for one which I detain and 
write down, fifty escape me. In spite of my weariness 
from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or 
sit for two minutes together. ' 1 nunc, et versus tecum 
meditare canoros.'* " 

At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbor- 
ing surgeon, requesting that he would come over to see 
me. In the evening he came, and after briefly stating 
the case to him, I asked this question : Whether he 
did not think that the opium might have acted as a 
stimulus to the digestive organs ; and that the present 
state of suffering in the stomach, which manifestly was 
the cause of the inability to sleep, might arise from 
indigestion 1 His answer was — No : on the contrary 
he thought that the suffering was caused by digestion 
itself, which should naturally go on below the con- 



APPENDIX. 123 

sciousness, but which, from the unnatural state of the 
stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was be- 
come distinctly perceptible. This opinion was plau- 
sible, and the unintermitting nature of the suffering dis- 
poses me to think that it was true ; for, if it had been 
any mere irregular affection of the- stomach, it should 
naturally have intermitted occasionally, and constantly 
fluctuated as to degree. The intention of nature, as 
manifested in the healthy state, obviously is, to with- 
draw from our notice all the vital motions, such as the 
circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction 
of the lungs, the peristaltic action of the stomach, &c. ; 
and opium, it seems, is able in this as in other instances 
to counteract her purposes. By the advice of the sur- 
geon I tried bitters. For a short time these greatly 
mitigated the feelings under which I labored ; but 
about the forty-second day of the experiment the 
symptoms already noticed began to retire, and new 
ones to arise of a different and far more tormenting 
class ; under these, but with a few intervals of remis- 
sion, I have since continued to suffer. But I dismiss 
them un described for two reasons : 1st, because the 
mind revolts from retracing circumstantially any suffer- 
ings from which it is removed by too short or by no, 
interval. To do this with minuteness enough to make 
the review of any use, would be indeed " infandum 
renovare dolurem" and possibly without a sufficient 
motive : for, 2dly, I doubt whether this latter state be 
any way referable to opium, positively considered, or 
even negatively ; that is, whether it is to be numbered 
amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium, 
or even amongst the earliest evils consequent upon a 



124 APPENDIX. 

want of opium in a system long deranged by its use. 
Certainly one part of the symptoms might be ac- 
counted for from the time of year (August ;) for, 
though the summer was not a hot one, yet in any case 
the sum of all the heat funded (if one may say so) dur- 
ing the previous months, added to the existing heat of 
that month, naturally renders August in its better half 
the hottest part of the year ; and it so happened that 
the excessive perspiration, which even at Christmas at- 
tends any great reduction in the daily quantum of 
opium, and which in July was so violent as to oblige 
me to use a bath five or six times a day, had about the 
setting in of the hottest season wholly retired, on which 
account any bad effect of the heat might be the more 
unmitigated. Another symptom, viz., what in my igno- 
rance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes affecting 
the shoulders, &c, but more often appearing to be 
seated in the stomach,) seemed again less probably 
attributable to the opium or the want of opium than to 
the dampness of the house * which I inhabit, which 
had about that time attained its maximum, July having 
been, as usual, a month of incessant rain in our" most 
rainy part of England. 

Under these reasons for doubting whether opium 
had any connection with the latter stage of my bodily 

* In saying this I meant no disrespect to the individual house, as 
the reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception 
of one or two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have 
been coated with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any 
house in this mountainous district which is wholly water-proof. 
The architecture of books, I flatter myself, is conducted on just 
principles in this country ; but for any other architecture, it is in a 
barbarous state, and, what is worse, in a retrograde state. 



APPENDIX. 125 

wretchedness, — (except indeed as an occasional cause, 
as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and 
thus predisposed to any mal-influence whatever,) — I 
willingly spare my reader all description of it : let it 
perish to him ; and would that I could as easily say, let 
it perish to my own remembrances, that any future 
hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid 
an ideal of possible human misery ! 

So much for the sequel of my experiment ; as to the 
former stage, in which properly lies the experiment 
and its application to other cases, I must request my 
reader not to forget the reasons for which I have re- 
corded it. These were two : 1st, a belief that I might 
add some trifle to the history of opium as a medical 
agent ; in this I am aware that I have not at all ful- 
filled my own intentions, in consequence of the torpor 
of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the sub- 
ject which besieged me whilst writing that part of my 
paper ; which part being immediately sent off to the 
press (distant about five degrees of latitude,) cannot be 
corrected or improved. But from this account, ram- 
bling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of bene- 
fit may arise to the persons most interested in such a 
history of opium, — viz. to opium-eaters in general, — 
that it establishes, for their consolation and encourage- 
ment, the fact that opium may be renounced, and with- 
out greater sufferings than an ordinary resolution may 
support ; and by a pretty rapid course * of descent. 



* On which last notice I would remark, that mine was too rapid, 
and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated ; or rather perhaps 
it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But, that 
the reader may judge for himself, and, above all, that the opium- 



126 



APPENDIX. 



To communicate this result of my experiment, was 
my foremost purpose. 2dly, as a purpose collateral to 



eater, who is preparing % to retire from business, may have every sort 
of information before him, I subjoin my diary. 



FIRST 


WEEK. 




SECOND WEEK. 






Drops of Laud. 






Drops 


of Laud. 


Mond. June 24 


130 Mond 


July 1 . . . 




. . 80 


" 25 


140 

130 

80 

80 




(C O 




. . 80 


" 26 


" 3 . . 




. . 90 


" 27 


" 4 . . 




. . 100 


" 28 


" 5 . . 




. . 80 


" 29 


80 

...... 80 




" 6 . . 




. . 80 


11 30 


" 7 . . 




. . 80 


THIRD 


WEEK. 




FOURTH WEEK. 






Drops of Laud. 






Drops 


of Laud. 


Mond. July 8 


300 


Mond. July 15 . . 




. 76 


" 9 


50 




" 16 . . 




. 73£ 


" 10 

" 11 1 


Hiatus in 




" 17 . . 

" 18 . . 




. 73£ 

. 70 


" 12 ( 


MS. 




" 19 . . 




. 240 


" 13 - 






" 20 . . 




. 80 


" 14 


76 




" 21 . . 




. 350 




FIFTH 


WEEK. 












Drops of Laud. 








Mond. Julv 22 . 




.... 60 








" 23 . 




. . . none 






" 24 . 




. . . none 






" 25 . 




. . . none 








" 26 . 




. . . 200 






" 27 . 




. . . none. 





What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps, to 
such numbers as 300, 350, &c. ? The impulse to these relapses 
was mere infirmity of purpose ; the motive, where any motive 
blended with this impulse, was either the principle of" reader pour 
■mieux sauter;" (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted 
for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which, on 
awaking, found itself partly accustomed to this new ration ;) or else 



APPENDIX. ]27 

this, I wished to explain how it had become impossible 
for me to compose a Third Part in time to accompany 
this republication ; for during the very time of this 
experiment, the proof-sheets of this reprint were sent to 
me from London ; and such was my inability to ex- 
pand or to improve them, that I could not even bear to 
read them over with attention enough to notice the 
press errors, or to correct any verbal inaccuracies. 
These were my reasons for troubling my reader with 
any record, long or short, of experiments relating to so 
truly base a subject as my own body ; and I am ear- 
nest with the reader, that he will not forget them, or so 
far misapprehend me as to believe it possible that I would 
condescend to so rascally a subject for its own sake, or 
indeed for any less object than that of general benefit 
to others. Such an animal as the self-observing vale- 
tudinarian, I know there is ; I have met him myself 
occasionally, and I know that he is the worst imagin- 
able heautontimoroumenos ; aggravating and sustaining, 
by calling into distinct consciousness, every symptom 
that would else, perhaps, under a different direction 
given to the thoughts, become evanescent. But as to 
myself, so profound is my contempt for this undigni- 
fied and selfish habit, that I could as little condescend 
to it as I could to spend my time in watching a poor 
servant girl, to whom at this moment I hear some lad 
or other making love at the back of my house. Is it 
for a Transcendental philosopher to feel any curiosity 



it was this principle — that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will 
be borne best which meet with a mood of anger ; now, whenever I 
ascended to any large dose, I was furiously incensed on the follow- 
ing day, and could then have borne anything. 









128 APPENDIX. 

on such an occasion ? Or can I, whose life is worth 
only eight and a half years' purchase, be supposed 
to have leisure for such trivial employments ? How- 
ever, to put this out of question, I shall say one thing, 
which will, perhaps, shock some readers ; but I am 
sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on 
on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much 
of his time on the phenomena of his own body without 
some regard for it ; whereas the reader sees that, so 
far from looking upon mine with any complacency or 
regard, I hate it and make it the object of my bitter 
ridicule and contempt ; and I should not be displeased 
to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts 
upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might here- 
after fall upon it. And in testification of my sincerity 
in saying this, I shall make the following offer. Like 
other men, I have particular fancies about the place of 
my burial ; having lived chiefly in a mountainous re- 
gion, I rather cleave to the conceit that a grave in a 
green church-yard amongst the ancient and solitary 
hills will be a sublimer and more tranquil place of re- 
pose for a philosopher than any in the hideous Gol- 
gothas of London. Yet if the gentlemen of Surgeon's 
Hall think that any benefit can redound to their 
science from inspecting the appearances in the body 
of an opium-eater, let them speak but a word, and I 
will take care that mine shall be legally secured to them 
— i. e. as soon as I have done with it myself. Let 
them not hesitate to express their wishes upon any 
scruples of false delicacy and consideration for my 
feelings ; I assure them that they will do me too much 
honor by " demonstrating " on such a crazy body as 



APPENDIX. 129 

mine ; and it will give me pleasure to anticipate this 
posthumous revenge and insult inflicted upon that 
which has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such 
bequests are not common ; reversionary benefits con- 
tingent upon the death of the testator are indeed dan- 
gerous to announce in many cases. Of this we have a 
remarkable instance in the habits of a Roman prince, 
who used, upon any notification made to him by rich 
persons, that they had left him a handsome estate in 
their wills, to express his entire satisfaction at such ar- 
rangements, and his gracious acceptance of those loyal 
legacies ; but then, if the testators neglected to give 
him immediate possession of the property, if they trai- 
torously " persisted in living " (si vivere perseverarent, 
as Suetonius expresses it,) he was highly provoked, 
and took his measures accordingly. In those times, 
and from one of the worst of the Caesars, we might ex- 
pect such conduct ; but I am sure that from English 
surgeons at this day, I need look for no expressions of 
impatience, or of any other feelings but such as are 
answerable to that pure love of science and all its in- 
terests, which induces me to make such an offer. 

Sept. 30th, 1822. 



r 



STJSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: 

BEING A SEQUEL TO 
"THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER.' 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work, — in 
1822, as a separate volume, — appeared the " Confes- 
sions of an English Opium-Eater." The object of that 
work was to reveal something of the grandeur which 
belongs 'potentially to human dreams. Whatever may 
be the number of those in whom this faculty of dream- 
ing splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not 
perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He 
whose talk is of oxen, will probably dream of oxen ; 
and the condition of human life, which yokes so vast a 
majority to a daily experience incompatible with much 
elevation of thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of 
grandeur in the reproductive faculty of dreaming, even 
for those whose minds are populous with solemn im- 
agery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must 
have a constitutional determination to reverie. This in 
the first place, and even this, where it exists strongly, 



132 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

is too much liable to disturbance from the gathering 
agitation of our present English life.' Already, in this 
year 1845, what by the procession through fifty years 
of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the 
earth, what by the continual development of vast 
physical agencies — steam in all its applications, light 
getting under harness as a slave for man,* powers 
from heaven descending upon education and accelera- 
tions of the press, powers from hell (as it might seem, 
but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery 
and the forces of destruction — the eye of the calmest 
observer is troubled ; the brain is haunted as if by 
some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us ; 
and it becomes too evident that, unless this colossal 
pace of advance can be retarded, (a thing not to be ex- 
pected,) or, which is happily more probable, can be met 
by counter forces of corresponding magnitude, forces in 
the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that 
shall radiate centifrugally against this storm of life so 
perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely 
human, left to itself, the natural tendency of so chaotic 
a tumult must be to evil ; for some minds to lunacy, 
for others to a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much 
this fierce condition of eternal hurry upon an arena too 
exclusively human in its interests, is likely to defeat 
the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen 
in the ordinary effect from living too constantly in 
varied company. The word dissipation, in one of its 
uses, expresses that effect ; the action of thought and 
feeling is too much dissipated and squandered. To 

* Daguerreotype, &c. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 133 

reconcentrate them into meditative habits, a necessity 
is felt by all observing persons for sometimes retiring 
from crowds. No man ever will unfold the capacities 
of his own intellect who does not at least chequer his 
life with solitude. How much solitude, so much pow- 
er. Or, if not true in that rigor of expression, to this 
formula undoubtedly it is that the wise rule of life 
must approximate. 

Among the powers in man which suffer by this too 
intense life of the social instincts, none suffers more 
than the power of dreaming. Let no man think this a 
trifle. The machinery for dreaming planted in the 
human brain was not planted for nothing. That fac- 
ulty, in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the 
one great tube through which man communicates with 
the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connection 
with the heart, the eye, and the ear, compose the mag- 
nificent apparatus which forces the infinite into the 
chambers of a human brain, and throws dark reflec- 
tions from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of 
the sleeping mind. 

But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude, 
which is becoming a visionary idea in England, on the 
other hand, it is certain that some merely physical 
agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming al- 
most preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exer- 
cise ; to some extent at least, and for some persons : 
but beyond all others is opium, which indeed seems to 
possess a specific power in that direction ; not merely 
for exalting the colors of dream-scenery, but for deep- 
ening its shadows ; and, above all, for strengthening 
the sense of its fearful realities. 



134 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

The Opium Confessions were written with some 
slight secondary purpose of exposing this specific pow- 
er of opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but much 
more with the purpose of displaying the faculty itself; 
and the outline of the work travelled in this course. 
Supposing a reader acquainted with the true object of 
the Confessions as here stated, viz. the revelation of 
dreaming, to have put this question : — 

14 But how came you to dream more splendidly than 
others ?" 

The answer would have been, — 

" Because (prcemissis pramiittendis) I took excessive 
quantities of opium." 

Secondly, suppose him to say, " But how came you 
to take opium in this excess ?" 

The answer to that would be, " Because some early 
events in my life had left a weakness in one organ 
which required (or seemed to require) that stimulant." 

Then, because the opium dreams could not always 
have been understood without a knowledge of these 
events, it became necessary to relate them. Now, 
these two questions and answers exhibit the law of the 
work, i. e. the principle which determined its form, but 
precisely in the inverse or regressive order. The work 
itself opened with the narration of my early adventures. 
These, in the natural order of succession, led to the 
opium as a resource for healing their consequences ; 
and the opium as naturally led to the dreams. But in 
the synthetic order of presenting the facts, what stood 
last in the succession of development, stood first in the 
order of my purposes. 

At the close of this little work, the reader was in- 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 135 

structed to believe, and truly instructed, that I had 
mastered the tyranny of opium. The fact is, that 
twice I mastered it, and by efforts even more prodi- 
gious, in the second of these cases than in the first. 
But one error I committed in both. I did not connect 
with the abstinence from opium, so trying to the forti- 
tude under any circumstances, that enormity of excess 
which (as I have since learned) is the one sole re- 
source for making it endurable. I overlooked, in those 
days, the one sine qua non for making the triumph 
permanent. Twice I sank, twice I rose again. A 
third time I sank ; partly from the cause mentioned, 
(the oversight as to exercise,) partly from other causes, 
on which it avails not now to trouble the reader. I 
could moralize if I chose ; and perhaps he will moral- 
ize whether I choose it or not. But, in the mean time, 
neither of us is acquainted properly with the circum- 
stances of the case ; I, from natural bias of judgment, 
not altogether acquainted ; and he (with his permis- 
sion) not at all. 

During this third prostration before the dark idol, and 
after some years, new and monstrous phenomena be- 
gan slowly to arise. For a time, these were neglected 
as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as I knew 
of. But when I could no longer conceal from myself 
that these dreadful symptoms were moving forward for 
ever, by a pace steadily, solemnly, and equably in- 
creasing, I endeavored, with some feeling of panic, 
for a third time to retrace my steps. But I had not 
reversed my motions for many weeks, before I became 
profoundly aware that this was impossible. Or, in the 
imagery of my dreams, which translated every thing 



136 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

into their own language, I saw through vast avenues of 
gloom those towering gates of ingress which hitherto 
had always seemed to stand open, now at last barred 
against my retreat, and hung with funeral crape. 

As applicable to this tremendous situation, (the situa- 
tion of one escaping by some refluent current from the 
maelstrom roaring for him in the distance, who finds 
suddenly that this current is but an eddy, wheeling 
round upon the same maelstrom,) I have since remem- 
bered a striking incident in a modern novel. A lady 
abbess of a convent, herself suspected of Protestant 
leanings, and in that way already disarmed of all effee- 
tual power, finds one of her own nuns (whom she knows 
to be innocent) accused of an offence leading to the 
most terrific of punishments. The nun will be immured 
alive if she is found guilty ; and there is no chance that 
she will not, for the evidence against her is strong, 
unless something were made known that cannot be 
made known ; and the judges are hostile. All follows 
in the order of the reader's fears. The witnesses 
depose ; the evidence is without effectual contradiction ; 
the conviction is declared ; the judgment is delivered ; 
nothing remains but to see execution done. At this 
crisis the abbess, alarmed too late for effectual interposi- 
tion, considers with herself that, according to the regu- 
lar forms, there will be one single night open, during 
which the prisoner cannot be withdrawn from her own 
separate jurisdiction. This one night, therefore, she 
will use, at any hazard to herself, for the salvation of 
her friend. At midnight, when all is hushed in the 
convent, the lady traverses the passages which lead to 
the cells of prisoners. She bears a master-key under 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIU3I-EATER. 137 

her professional habit. As this will open every door in 
every corridor, already, by anticipation, she feels the 
luxury of holding her emancipated friend within her 
arms. Suddenly she has reached the door ; she des- 
cries a dusky object ; she raises her lamp, and, ranged 
within the recess of the entrance, she beholds the fune- 
ral banner of the holy office, and the black robes of its 
inexorable officials. 

1 apprehend that, in a situation such as this, suppos- 
ing it a real one, the lady abbess would not start, would 
not show any marks externally of consternation or hor- 
ror. The case was beyond that. The sentiment 
which attends the sudden revelation that all is lost ! 
silently is gathered up into the heart ; it is too deep for 
gestures or for words ; and no part of it passes to the 
outside. Were the ruin conditional, or were it in any 
point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations, 
and to seek sympathy. But where the ruin is under- 
stood to be absolute, where sympathy cannot be conso- 
lation, and counsel cannot be hope, this is otherwise. 
The voice perishes ; the gestures are frozen ; and the 
spirit of man flies back upon its own centre. I, at 
least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and hung 
with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, 
spoke not, nor started, nor groaned. One profound 
sigh ascended from my heart, and I was silent for 
days. 

It is the record of this third, or final stage of opium, 
as one differing in something more than degree from 
the others, that I am now undertaking. But a scruple 
arises as to the true interpretation of these final symp- 
toms. I have elsewhere explained, that it was no par- 



13S A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

ticular purpose of mine, and why it was no particular 
purpose, to warn other opium-eaters. Still, as some 
few persons may use the record in that way, it becomes 
a matter of interest to ascertain how far it is likely. 
that, even with the same excesses, other opium-eaters 
could fall into the same condition. I do not mean to 
lay a stress upon any supposed idiosyncrasy in myself. 
Possibly even* man has an idiosyncrasy. In some 
things, undoubtedly, he has. For no man ever yet 
resembled another man so far, as not to differ from him 
in features innumerable of his inner nature. But what 
I point to are not peculiarities of temperament or of 
organization, so much as peculiar circumstances and 
incidents through which my own separate experience 
had revolved. Some of these were of a nature to alter 
the whole economy of my mind. Great convulsions, 
from whatever cause, from conscience, from fear, from 
grief, from struggles of the will, sometimes, in passing 
away themselves, do not carry off the changes which 
they have worked. All the agitations of this magnitude 
which a man may have threaded in his life, he neither 
ought to report, nor could report. But one which af- 
fected my childhood is a privileged exception. It is 
privileged as a proper communication for a stranger's 
ear ; because, though relating to a man's proper self, 
it is a self so far removed from his present self as to 
wound no feelings of delicacy or just reserve. It is privi- 
leged also as a proper subject for the sympathy of the 
narrator. An adult sympathizes with himself in child- 
hood because he is the same, and because (being the 
same) yet he is not the same. He acknowledges the 
deep, mysterious identity between himself, as adult and 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 139 

as infant, for the ground of his sympathy ; and yet, 
with this general agreement, and necessity of agree- 
ment, he feels the differences between ' his two selves 
as the main quickeners of his sympathy. He pities 
the infirmities, as they arise to light in his young fore- 
runner, which now perhaps he does not share ; he looks 
indulgently upon errors of the understanding, or limita- 
tions of view which now he has long survived ; and 
sometimes, also, he honors in the infant that rectitude 
of will which, under some temptations, he may since 
have felt it so difficult to maintain. 

The particular case to which I refer in my own child- 
hood, was one of intolerable grief; a trial, in fact, 
more severe than many people at any age are called 
upon to stand. The relation in which the case stands 
to my latter opium experiences, is this : — Those vast 
clouds of gloomy grandeur which overhung my dreams 
at all stages of opium, but which grew into the dark- 
est of miseries in the last, and that haunting of the 
human face, which latterly towered into a curse, were 
they not partly derived from this childish experience ? 
It is certain that, from the essential solitude in which 
my childhood was passed ; from the depth of my sen- 
sibility ; from the exaltation of this by the resistance of 
an intellect too prematurely developed ; it resulted that 
the terrific grief which I passed through, drove a shaft 
for me into the worlds of death and darkness which 
never again closed, and through which it might be said 
that I ascended and descended at will, according to the 
temper of my spirits. Some of the phenomena devel- 
oped in my dream-scenery, undoubtedly, do but repeat 
the experiences of childhood ; and others seem likely 



140 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

to have been growths and fructifications from seeds at 
that time sown. 

The reasons, therefore, for prefixing some account 
of a " passage " in childhood, to this record of a dread- 
ful visitation from opium excess, are, 1st, That, in 
in coloring, it harmonizes with that record, and, there- 
fore, is related to it at least in point of feeling ; 2dly, 
That possibly it was in part the origin of some features 
in that record, and so far is related to it in logic ; 
3dly, That, the final assault of opium being of a nature 
to challenge the attention of medical men, it is impor- 
tant to clear away all doubts and scruples which 
can gather about the roots of such a malady. Was it 
opium, or was it opium in combination with something 
else, that raised these storms ? 

Some cynical reader will object, that for this last 
purpose it would have been sufficient to slate the fact, 
without rehearsing in extenso the particulars of that 
case in childhood. But the reader of more kindness 
(for a surly reader is always a bad critic) will also have 
more discernment ; and he will perceive that it is not 
for the mere facts that the case is reported, but be- 
cause these facts move through a wilderness of natural 
thoughts or feelings ; some in the child who suffers ; 
some in the man who reports ; but all so far interesting 
as they relate to solemn objects. Meantime, the objec- 
tion of the sullen critic reminds me of a scene some- 
times beheld at the English lakes. Figure to yourself 
an energetic tourist, who protests every where that he 
comes only to see the lakes. He has no business 
whatever ; he is not searching for any recreant indorser 
of a bill, but simply in search of the picturesque. Yet 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 141 

this man adjures every landlord, " by the virtue of his 
oath," to tell him, and as he hopes for peace in this 
world to tell him truly, which is the nearest road to 
Keswick. Next, he applies to the postilions — the 
Westmoreland postilions always fly down hills at full 
stretch without locking — but nevertheless, in the full 
career of their fiery race, our picturesque man lets 
down the glasses, pulls up four horses and two postil- 
ions, at the risk of six necks and twenty legs, adjuring 
them to reveal whether they are taking the shortest 
road. Finally, he descries my unworthy self upon the 
road ; and, instantly stopping his flying equipage, he 
demands of me (as one whom he believes to be a 
scholar and a man of honor), whether there is not, in 
the possibility of things, a shorter cut to Keswick. Now 
the answer which rises to the lips of landlord, two 
postilions, and myself, is this : " Most excellent stranger, 
as you come to the lakes simply to see their loveliness, 
might it not be as well to ask after the most beautiful 
road, rather than the shortest ? Because, if abstract 
shortness, if r'o brevity is your object, then the shortest 
of all possible tours would seem, with submission, never 
to have left London." On the same principle, I tell 
my critic that the whole course of this narrative re- 
sembles, and was meant to resemble, a caduceus 
wreathed about with meandering ornaments, or the 
shaft of a tree's stem hung round and surmounted with 
some vagrant parasitical plant. The mere medical 
subject of the opium answers to the dry, withered pole, 
which shoots all the rings of the flowering plants, and 
seems to do so by some dexterity of its own ; whereas, 



142 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

in fact, the plant and its tendrils have curled round the 
sullen cylinder by mere luxuriance of theirs. Just as 
in Cheapside, if you look right and left, the streets so 
narrow, that lead off at right angles, seem quarried and 
blasted out of some Babylonian brick kiln; bored, not 
raised artificially by the builder's hand. But, if you 
inquire of the worthy men who live in that neigh- 
borhood, you will find it unanimously deposed — that 
not the streets were quarried out of the bricks, but, on 
the contrary, (most ridiculous as it seems,) that the 
bricks have supervened upon the streets. 

The streets did not intrude amongst the bricks, but 
those cursed bricks came to imprison the streets. So, 
also, the ugly pole — hop pole, vine pole, espalier, no 
matter what — is there only for support. Not the 
flowers are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers. 
Upon the same analogy view me, as one (in the words 
of a true and most impassioned poet*) " viridantem 
floribus hastas" — making verdant, and gay with the 
life of flowers, murderous spears and halberts — things 
that express death in their origin, (being made from 
dead substances that once had lived in forests,) things 
that express ruin in their use. The true object in my 
"Opium Confessions'" is not the naked physiological 
theme — on the contrary, that is the ugly pole, the 
murderous spear, the halbert — but those wandering 
musical variations upon the theme — those parasitical 
thoughts, feelings, digressions, which climb up with 
bells and blossoms round about the arid stock ; ramble 
away from it at times with perhaps too rank a luxuri- 

* Valerius Flaccus. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 143 

ance ; but at the same time, by the eternal interest at- 
tached to the subjects of these digressions, no matter 
what were the execution, spread a glory over incidents 
that for themselves would be — less than nothing 



144 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 



PART I. 



THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD. 

It is so painful to a lover of open-hearted sincerity, 
that any indirect traits of vanity should even seem to 
creep into records of profound passion ; and yet, on the 
other hand, it is so impossible, without an unnatural 
restraint upon the freedom of the narrative, to prevent 
oblique gleams reaching the reader from such circum- 
stances of luxury or elegance as did really surround 
my childhood, that on all accounts I think it better to 
tell him from the first, with the simplicity of truth, in 
what order of society my family moved at the time 
from which this preliminary narrative is dated. Other- 
wise it would happen that, merely by moving truly 
and faithfully through the circumstances of this early 
experience, I could hardly prevent the reader from 
receiving an impression as of some higher rank than 
did really belong to my family. My father was a 
merchant ; not in the sense of Scotland, where it 
means a man who sells groceries in a cellar, but in 
the English sense, a sense severely exclusive — viz. 
he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no 
other ; therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no other, 
— which last circumstance it is important to mention, 
because it brings him within the benefit of Cicero's 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 145 

condescending distinction * — as one to be despised, 
certainly, but not too intensely to be despised even by 
a Roman senator. He, this imperfectly despicable 
man, died at an early age, and very soon after the 
incidents here recorded, leaving to his family, then 
consisting of a wife and six children, an unburthened 
estate producing exactly .£1600 a year. Naturally, 
therefore, at the date of my narrative, if narrative it 
can be called, he had an income still larger, from the 
addition of current commercial profits. Now, to any 
man who is acquainted with commercial life, but above 
all, with such life in England, it will readily occur that 
in an opulent English family of that class — opulent, 
though not rich in a mercantile estimate — the domestic 
economy is likely to be upon a scale of liberality 
altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders 
in foreign nations. Whether as to the establishment of 
servants, or as to the provision made for the comfort of 
all its members, such a household not uncommonly 
eclipses the scale of living even amongst the poorer 
classes of our nobility, though the most splendid in 
Europe — a fact which, since the period of my infancy, 
I have had many personal opportunities for verifying ' 
both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar 
anomaly affecting the domestic economy of merchants, 
there arises a disturbance upon the general scale of 
outward signs by which we measure the relations of 
rank. The equation, so to speak, between one order 

* Cicero, in a well known passage of his Ethics, speaks of trade 
as irredeemably base, if petty ; but as not so absolutely felonious if 
wholesale. He gives a real merchant (one who is such in the 
English sense) leave to think himself a shade above small-Leer. 
10 



146 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

of society and another, which usually travels in the 
natural line of their comparative expenditure, is here 
interrupted and defeated, so that one rank would be 
collected from the name of the occupation, and another 
rank, much higher, from the splendor of the domestic 
menage. I warn the reader, therefore (or rather, my 
explanation has already warned him), that he is not to 
infer from any casual gleam of luxury or elegance a 
corresponding elevation of rank. 

We, the children of the house, stood in fact upon the 
very happiest tier in the scatTolding of society for all 
good influences. The prayer of Agar — " Give me 
neither poverty nor riches " — was realized for us. 
That blessing had we, being neither too high nor too 
low ; high enough we were to see models of good 
manners ; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of 
solitudes. Amply furnished with the nobler benefits of 
wealth, extra means of health, of intellectual culture, 
and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand, we knew 
nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the 
consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into 
restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspir- 
in" - , we had no motives for shame, we had none for 
pride. Grateful also to this hour I am, that, amidst 
luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan 
simplicity of diet — that we fared, in fact, very much 
less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the 
model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should 
return thanks to Providence for all the separate bless- 
ings of my early situation, these four I would single 
out as chiefly worthy to be commemorated — that I 
lived in the country ; that I lived in solitude ; that my 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 147 

infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, 
not by horrid pugilistic brothers ; finally, that I and 
they were dutiful children of a pure, holy, and magni- 
ficent church. 



The earliest incidents in my life which affected me 
so deeply as to be rememberable at this day, were two, 
and both before I could have completed my second 
year, viz. a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur 
about a favorite nurse, which is interesting for a reason 
to be noticed hereafter ; and, secondly, the fact of 
having connected a profound sense of pathos with the 
reappearance, very early in spring, of some crocuses. 
This I mention as inexplicable, for such annual resur- 
rections of plants and flowers affect us only as memo- 
rials, or suggestions of a higher change, and therefore 
in connection with the idea of death; but of death I 
could, at that time, have had no experience whatever. 

This, however, T was speedily to acquire. My two 
eldest sisters — eldest of -three then living, and also 
elder than myself — were summoned to an early death. 
The first who died was Jane, about a year older than 
myself. She was three and a half, I two and a half, 
plus or minus some trifle that I do not recollect. But 
death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I could 
not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad per- 
plexity. There was another death in the house about 
the same time, viz. of a maternal grandmother ; but 
as she had in a manner come to us for the express 
purpose of dying in her daughter's society, and from 
illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery party 



148 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

knew her but little, and were certainly more affected 
by the death (which I witnessed) of a favorite bird, 
viz. a kingfisher who had been injured by an acci- 
dent. With my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, 
as I have said, less sorrowful than unintelligible) there 
was, however, connected an incident which made a 
most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my 
tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond 
what would seem credible for my years. If there was 
one thing in this world from which, more than from 
any other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was bru- 
tality and violence. Now a whisper arose in the fam- 
ily, that a woman-servant, who by accident was drawn 
off from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for 
a day or two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, 
if not brutally ; and as this ill treatment happened 
within two days of her death, so that the occasion of it 
must have been some fretfulness in the poor child, 
caused by her sufferings, naturally there was a sense 
of awe diffused through the family. I believe the 
story never reached my mother, and possibly it was 
exaggerated ; but upon me the effect was terrific. I 
did not often see the person charged with this cruelty ; 
but, when I did, my eyes sought the ground ; nor 
could I have borne to look her in the face — not 
through anger ; and as to vindictive thoughts, how 
could these lodge in a powerless infant ? The feeling 
which fell upon me was a shuddering awe, as upon a 
first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil 
and strife. Though born in a large town, I had passed 
the whole of my childhood, except for the few earliest 
weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three innocent little 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 149 

sisters for playmates, sleeping always amongst them, 
and shut up forever in a silent garden from all knowl- 
edge of poverty, or oppression, or outrage, I had not 
suspected until this moment the true complexion of the 
world in which myself and my sisters were living. 
Henceforward the character of my thoughts must have 
changed greatly ; for so representative are some acts, 
that one single case of the class is sufficient to throw 
open before you the whole theatre of possibilities in 
that direction. I never heard that the woman, accused 
of this cruelty, took it at all to heart, even after the 
event which so immediately succeeded, had reflected 
upon it a more painful emphasis. On the other hand, I 
knew of a case, and will pause to mention it, where a 
mere semblance and shadow of such cruelty, under sim- 
ilar circumstances, inflicted the grief of self-reproach 
through the remainder of life. A boy, interesting in 
his appearance, as also from his remarkable docility, 
was attacked, on a cold day of spring, by a complaint 
of the trachea — not precisely croup, but like it. He 
was three years old, and had been ill perhaps for 
four days ; but at intervals had been in high spirits, 
and capable of playing. This sunshine, gleaming 
through dark clouds, had continued even on the fourth 
day; and from nine to eleven o'clock at night, he had 
showed more animated pleasure than ever. An old 
servant, hearing of his illness, had called to see him ; 
and her mode of talking with him, had excited all the 
joyousness of his nature. About midnight his mother, 
fancying that his feet felt cold, was muffling them up in 
flannels ; and, as he seemed to resist her a little, she 
struck lightly on the sole of one foot as a mode of 



150 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

admonishing him to be quiet. He did not repeat his 
motion ; and in less than a minute his mother had him 
in her arms with his face looking upwards. " What is 
the meaning," she exclaimed, in sudden affright, u of 
this strange repose settling upon his features ?" She 
called loudly to a servant in another room ; but before 
the servant could reach her, the child had drawn two 
inspirations, deep, yet gentle — and had died in his 
mother's arms. Upon this the poor afflicted lady 
made the discovery that those struggles, which she 
had supposed to be expressions of resistance to herself, 
were the struggles of departing life. It followed, or 
seemed to follow, that with these final struggles had 
blended an expression, on her part, of displeasure. 
Doubtless the child had not distinctly perceived it ; but 
the mother could never look back to that incident with- 
out self-reproach. And seven years after, when her 
own death happened, no progress had been made in 
reconciling her thoughts to that which only the depth of 
love could have viewed as an offence. 

So passed away from earth one out of those sisters 
that made up my nursery playmates ; and so did my 
acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence 
with mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of 
mortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had 
gone away ; but, perhaps, she would come back. 
Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance ! Gracious 
immunity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its 
strength ! I was sad for Jane's absence. But still in 
my heart I trusted that she would come again. Sum- 
mer and winter came again — crocuses and roses ; 
why not little Jane ? 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 151 

Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my 
infant heart. Not so the* second. For thou, dear, 
noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as 
thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy 
a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola in token of thy 
premature intellectual grandeur — thou whose head, 
for its superb developments, was the astonishment of 
science * — thou next, but after an interval of happy 
years, thou also wert summoned away from our nur- 
sery ; and the night which, for me, gathered upon that 
event, ran after my steps far into life ; and perhaps at 
this day I resemble little for good or for ill that which 
else I should have been. Pillar of fire, that didst go 
before me to guide and to quicken — pillar of dark- 
ness, when thy countenance was turned away to God, 



* " The astonishment of science." — Her medical attendants were 
Dr. Percival, a well known literary physician, who had been a cor- 
respondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c, and Mr. Charles White, 
a very distinguished surgeon. It was he who pronounced her head 
to be the finest in its structure and development of any that he had 
ever seen, an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated in 
after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintance 
with the subject may be presumed from this, that he wrote and pub- 
lished a work on the human skull, supported by many measurements 
which he had made of heads selected from all varieties of the human 
species. Meantime, as I would be loath that any trait of what 
might seem vanity should creep into this record, I will candidly 
admit that she died of hydrocephalus; and it has been often sup- 
posed that the premature expansion of the intellect in cases of that 
class, is altogether morbid ; forced on, in fact, by the mere stimula- 
tion of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as a possibility, the 
very inverse order of relation between the disease and the intellec- 
tual manifestations. Not the disease may always have caused the 
preternatural growth of the intellect, but, on the contrary, this growth 
coming on spontaneonsly, and outrunning the capacities of the phy- 
sical structure, may have caused the disease. 



152 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

that didst too truly shed the shadow of death over my 
young heart, in what scales should I weigh thee ? 
Was the blessing greater from thy heavenly presence, 
or the blight which followed thy departure ? Can a 
man weigh off and value the glories of dawn against 
the darkness of hurricane ? Or, if he could, how is it 
that, when a memorable love has been followed by a 
memorable bereavement, even suppose that God would 
replace the sufferer in a point of time anterior to the 
entire experience, and offer to cancel the woe, but so 
that the sweet face which had caused the woe should 
also be obliterated, vehemently would every man 
shrink from the exchange ! In the Paradise Lost, 
this strong instinct of man, to prefer the heavenly, 
mixed and polluted with the earthly, to a level experi- 
ence offering neither one nor the other, is divinely 
commemorated. What words of pathos are in that 
speech of Adam's — " If God should make another 
Eve," &c., that is, if God should replace him in his 
primitive state, and should condescend to bring again a 
second Eve, one that would listen to no temptation, 
still that original partner of his earliest solitude — 

" Creature in whom excelled 
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, 
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet " — 

even now, when she appeared in league with an eter- 
nity of woe, and ministering to his ruin, could not be 
displaced for him by any better or happier Eve. 
" Loss of thee ! " he exclaims in this anguish of 

trial — 

" Loss of thee 
Would never from my heart ; no, no, I feel 
The link of nature draw me ; flesh of flesh, 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 153 

Bone of my bone ihou art ; and from thy state 
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or wo." * 

But what was it that drew my heart, by gravitation 
so strong, to my sister ? Could a child, little above six 
years of age, place any special value upon her intel- 
lectual forwardness ? Serene and capacious as her 
mind appeared to me upon after review, was that a 
charm for stealing away the heart of an infant ? Oh, 
no ! I think of it now with interest, because it lends, 
in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of 
my fondness. But then it was lost upon me ; or, if 
not lost, was but dimly perceived. Hadst thou been 
an idiot, my sister, not the less I must have loved thee, 
having that capacious heart overflowing, even as mine 
overflowed, with tenderness, and stung, even as mine 
was stung, by the necessity of being loved. This it 
was which crowned thee with beauty — 

" Love, the holy sense, 
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense." 

* Amongst the oversights in the Paradise Lost, some of which 
have not yet been perceived, it is certainly one — that, by placing in 
such overpowering light of pathos the sublime sacrifice of Adam to 
his love for his frail companion, he has too much lowered the guilt 
of his disobedience to God. All that Milton can say afterwards 
does not, and cannot, obscure the beauty of that action ; reviewing 
it calmly, we condemn, but taking the impassioned station of Adam 
at the moment of temptation, we approve in our hearts. This 
was certainly an oversight ; but it was one very difficult to redress. 
I remember, amongst the many exquisite thoughts of John Paul 
(Richter,) one which strikes me as peculiarly touching upon this 
subject. He suggests, not as any grave, theological comment, but 
as the wandering fancy of a poetic heart, that, had Adam conquered 
the anguish of separation as a pure sacrifice of obedience to God, 
his reward would have been the pardon and reconciliation of Eve, 
together with her restoration to innocence. 



154 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

That lamp lighted in Paradise was kindled for me 
which shone so steadily in thee ; and never but to thee 
only, never again since thy departure, durst I utter the 
feelings which possessed me. For I was the shyest of 
children ; and a natural sense of personal dignity held 
me back at all stages of life, from exposing the least 
ray of feelings which I was not encouraged wholly to 
reveal. 

It would be painful and it is needless, to pursue the 
course of that sickness which carried off my leader 
and companion. She (according to my recollection at 
this moment) was just as much above eight years as I 
above six. And perhaps this natural precedency of 
authority in judgment, and the tender humility with 
which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the 
fascinations of her presence. It was upon a Sunday 
evening, or so people fancied, that the spark of fatal 
fire fell upon that train of predispositions to a brain 
complaint which had hitherto slumbered within her. 
She had been permitted to drink tea at the house of a 
laboring man, the father of an old female servant- 
The sun had set. when she returned in the company of 
this servant through meadows reeking with exhalations 
after a fervent day. From that time she sickened. 
Happily a child in such circumstances feels no anxie- 
ties. Looking upon medical men as people whose 
natural commission it is to heal diseases, since it is 
their natural function to profess it, knowing them only 
as ex-qfficio privileged to make war upon pain and sick- 
ness, I never had a misgiving about the result. I 
grieved indeed that my sister should lie in bed ; I 
grieved still more sometimes to hear her moan. But 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 155 

all this appeared to me no more than a night of trouble 
on which the dawn would soon arise. Oh ! moment 
of darkness and delirium, when a nurse awakened me 
from that delusion, and launched God's thunderbolt 
at my heart in the assurance that my sister must die. 
Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it " cannot 
be remembered."* Itself, as a remarkable thing, is 
swallowed up in its own chaos. Mere anarchy and 
confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I 
was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to 
recal the circumstances of that time, when my agony 
was at its height, and hers in another sense was ap- 
proaching. Enough to say, that all was soon over ; 
and the morning of that day had at last arrived which 
looked down upon her innocent face, sleeping the 
sleep from which there is no awaking, and upon me 
sorrowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation. 
On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet 
temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human 
scrutiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once 
more. Not for the world would I have made this 
known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me. 
I had never heard of feelings that take the name of 
" sentimental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. But 
grief even in a child hates the light, and shrinks from 
human eyes. The house was large ; there were two 
staircases ; and by one of these I knew that about noon, 
when all would be quiet, I could steal up into her 
chamber. I imagine that it was exactly high noon 

* " I stood in unimaginable trance 

And agony, which cannot he remember'd." 

Speech of Alhadra in Coleridge's Remorse. 



156 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

when I reached the chamber door ; it was locked, but 
the key was not taken away. Entering, I closed the 
door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall 
which ascended through all the stories, no echo ran 
along the silent walls. Then turning round, I sought 
my sister's face. But the bed had been moved, and 
the back was now turned. Nothing met my eyes but 
one large window wide open, through which the sun of 
midsummer at noonday was showering down torrents 
of splendor. The weather was dry, the sky was 
cloudless, the blue depths seemed the express types of 
infinity ; and it was not possible for eye to behold or 
for heart to conceive any symbols more pathetic of life 
and the glory of life. 

Let me pause for one instant in approaching a 
remembrance so affecting and revolutionary for my 
own mind, and one which (if any earthly remem- 
brance) will survive for me in the hour of death, — to 
remind some readers, and to inform others, that in the 
original Opium Confessions I endeavored to explain 
the reason * why death, cater is paribus, is more pro- 
foundly affecting in summer than in other parts of the 
year ; so far at least as it is liable to any modification 
at all from accidents of scenery or season. The rea- 
son, as I there suggested, lies in the antagonism between 
the tropical redundancy of life in summer and the dark 
sterilities of the grave. The summer we see, the 
grave we haunt with our thoughts ; the glory is around 
us, the darkness is within us. And, the two coming 
into collision, each exalts the other into stronger relief. 

* Some readers will question the fact, and seek no reason. But 
did they ever suffer grief at any season of the year? 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 157 

But in my case there was even a subtler reason why 
the summer had this intense power of vivifying the 
spectacle or the thoughts of death. And, recollecting 
it, often I have been struck with the important truth, 
that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass 
to us through perplexed combinations of concrete ob- 
jects, pass to us as involutes (if I may coin that word) 
in compound experiences incapable of being disen- 
tangled, than ever reach us directly, and in their own 
abstract shapes. It had happened that amongst our 
nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated 
with many pictures. And in long dark evenings, as 
my three sisters with myself sate by the firelight round 
the guard of our nursery, no book was so much in 
request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as 
mysteriously as music. One young nurse, whom we 
all loved, before any candle was lighted, would often 
strain her eye to read it for us ; and sometimes, 
according to her simple powers, would endeavor to 
explain what we found obscure. We, the children, 
were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness ; 
the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by 
firelight, suited our evening state of feelings ; and 
they suited also the divine revelations of power and 
mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the 
story of a just man, — man and yet not man, real 
above all things, and yet shadowy above all things, 
who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine, — 
slept upon our minds like early dawn upon the waters. 
The nurse knew and explained to us the chief differ- 
ences in oriental climates ; and all these differences 
(as it happens) express themselves in the great va- 



153 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

rieties of summer. The cloudless sunlights of Syria 
— those seemed to argue everlasting summer ; the 
disciples plucking the ears of corn — that must be 
summer ; but, above all, the very name of Palm Sun- 
day (a festival in the English church) troubled me 
like an anthem. " Sunday ! " what was that ? That 
was the day of peace which masqued another peace 
deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. 
"Palms!" what were they? That was an equivo- 
cal word ; palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed 
the pomps of life ; palms, as a product of nature, 
expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this 
explanation does not suffice ; it was not merely by the 
peace and by the summer, by the deep sound of rest 
below all rest, and of ascending glory, that I had been 
haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to 
those deep images both in time and in place. The 
great event of Jerusalem was at hand when Palm Sun- 
day came ; and the scene of that Sunday was near in 
place to Jerusalem. Yet what then was Jerusalem ? 
Did I fancy it to be the omphalos (navel) of the earth ? 
That pretension had once been made for Jerusalem, 
and once for Delphi; and both pretensions had become 
ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known. 
Yes ; but if not of the earth, for earth's tenant Jeru- 
salem was the omphalos of mortality. Yet how? there 
on the contrary it was, as we infants understood, that 
mortality had been trampled under foot. True ; but 
for that very reason there it was that mortality had 
opened its very gloomiest crater. There it was indeed 
that the human had risen on wings from the grave ; 
but for that reason there also it was that the divine had 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 159 

been swallowed up by the abyss ; the lesser star could 
not rise, before the greater would submit to eclipse. 
Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death not 
merely as a mode of antagonism, but also through 
intricate relations to scriptural scenery and events. 

Out of this digression, which was almost necessary 
for the purpose of showing how inextricably my feel- 
ings and images of death were entangled with those of 
summer, I return to the bedchamber of my sister. 
From the gorgeous sunlight I turned round to the 
corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure, there the 
angel face ; and, as people usually fancy, it was said 
in the house that no features had suffered any change. 
Had they not ? The forehead, indeed, the serene and 
noble forehead, that might be the same ; but the frozen 
eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath 
them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to 
palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing an- 
guish, could these be mistaken for life ? Had it been 
so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips 
with tears and never-ending kisses ? But so it was not. 
I stood checked for a moment ; awe, not fear, fell upon 
me ; and, whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, 
the most mournful that ear ever heard. Mournful ! 
that is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept 
the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries. Many 
times since, upon a summer day, when the sun is about 
the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and 
uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but 
saintly swell : it is in this world the one sole audible 
symbol of eternity. And three times in my life I have 
happened to hear the same sound in the same circum- 



160 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

stances, viz. when standing between an open window 
and a dead body on a summer day. 

Instantly when my ear caught this vast iEolian into- 
nation, when my eye filled with the golden fullness of 
life, the pomps and glory of the heavens outside, and 
turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread 
my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A 
vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, 
a shaft which ran up for ever. I in spirit rose as if on 
billows that also ran up the shaft for ever; and the 
billows seemed to pursue the throne of God ; but that 
also ran before us and fled away continually. The 
flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and 
ever. Frost, gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of 
death, seemed to repel me ; I slept — for how long I 
cannot say : slowly I recovered my self-possession, and 
found myself standing, as before, close to my sister's 
bed. 

Oh * flight of the solitary child to the solitary God 
— flight from the ruined corpse to the throne that could 
not be ruined ! — how rich wert thou in truth for after 
years. Rupture of grief, that, being too mighty for a 
child to sustain, foundest a happy oblivion in a heaven- 
born sleep, and within that sleep didst conceal a 
dream, whose meaning in after years, when slowly I 
deciphered, suddenly there flashed upon me new light : 
and even by the grief of a child, as I will show you, 
reader, hereafter, were confounded the falsehoods of 
philosophers, t 



* <t>vyij fiorov TiQog r orov. — Plotixus. 

t The thoughts referred to will be given in final notes ; as at this 
point *. ey seemed too much to interrupt the course of the nar- 
rative. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 161 

In the Opium Confessions I touched a little upon the 
extraordinary power connected with opium (after long 
use) of amplifying the dimensions of time. Space also 
it amplifies by degrees that are sometimes terrific. 
But time it is upon which the exalting and multiplying 
power of opium chiefly spends its operation. Time 
becomes infinitely elastic, stretching out to such im- 
measurable and vanishing termini, that it seems ri- 
diculous to compute the sense of it on waking by 
expressions commensurate to human life. As in starry 
fields one computes by diameters of the earth's orbit, 
or of Jupiter's, so in valuing the virtual time lived 
during some dreams, the measurement by generations 
is ridiculous — by millenia is ridiculous ; by aeons, I 
should say, if seons were more determinate, would be 
also ridiculous. On this single occasion, however, in 
my life, the very inverse phenomenon occurred. But 
why speak of it in connection with opium ? Could a 
child of six years old have been under that influence ? 
No, but simply because it so exactly reversed the oper- 
ation of opium. Instead of a short interval expanding 
into a vast one, upon this occasion a long one had 
contracted into a minute. I have reason to believe 
that a very long one had elapsed during this wandering 
or suspension of my perfect mind. When I returned 
to myself, there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the 
stairs. I was alarmed ; for I believed that, if anybody 
should detect me, means would be taken to prevent 
my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips 
that I should kiss no more, and slunk like a guilty 
thing with stealthy steps from the room. Thus per- 
ished the vision, loveliest amongst all the shows .rhich 
11 



162 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

earth has revealed to me ; thus mutilated was the part- 
ing which should have lasted for ever ; thus tainted 
with fear was the farewell sacred to love and grief, 
to perfect love and perfect grief. 

Oh, Ahasuerus, everlasting Jew ! * fable or not a 
fable, thou when first starting on thy endless pilgrim- 
age of woe, thou when first flying through the gates of 
Jerusalem, and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing 
curse behind thee, couldst not more certainly have 
read thy doom of sorrow in the misgivings of thy 
troubled brain than I when passing forever from my 
sister's room. The worm was at my heart ; and, con- 
fining myself to that stage of life, I may say — the 
worm that could not die. For if, when standing upon 
the threshold of manhood, I had ceased to feel its per- 
petual gnawings, that was because a vast expansion of 
intellect, it was because new hopes, new necessities, 
and the frenzy of youthful blood, had translated me 
into a new creature. Man is doubtless one by some 
subtle nexus that we cannot perceive, extending from 
the new-born infant to the superannuated dotard : but 
as regards many affections and passions incident to his 
nature at different stages, he is not one ; the unity of 
man in this respect is coextensive only with the par- 
ticular stage to which the passion belongs. Some 
passions, as that of sexual love, are celestial by one 
half of their origin, animal and earthly by the other 
half. These will not survive their own appropriate 
stage. But love, which is altogether holy, like that 

* "Everlasting Jew!" — der ewige Jude — which is the com- 
mon German expression for The Wandering Jew, and sublimer 
even than our own- 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 163 

between two children, will revisit undoubtedly by 
glimpses the silence and the darkness of old age : and 
I repeat my belief — that unless bodily torment should 
forbid it, that final experience in my sister's bedroom, 
or some other in which her innocence was concerned, 
will rise again for me to illuminate the hour of death. 

On the day following this which I have recorded, 
came a body of medical men to examine the brain, 
and the particular nature of the complaint, for in some 
of its symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. 
Such is the sanctity of death, and especially of death 
alighting on an innocent child, that even gossipping 
people do not gossip on such a subject. Consequently, 
I knew nothing of the purpose which drew together 
these surgeons, nor suspected anything of the cruel 
changes which might have been wrought in my sister's 
head. Long after this I saw a similar case ; I sur- 
veyed the corpse (it was that of a beautiful boy, eigh- 
teen years old, who had died of the same complaint) one 
hour after the surgeons had laid the skull in ruins ; but 
the dishonors of this scrutiny were hidden by bandages, 
and had not disturbed the repose of the countenance. 
So it might have been here ; but, if it were not so, 
then I was happy in being spared the shock, from 
having that marble image of peace, icy and rigid as it 
was, unsettled by disfiguring images. Some hours 
after the strangers had withdrawn, I crept again to the 
room, but the door was now locked, the key was taken 
away — and I was shut out for ever. 

Then came the funeral. I, as a point of decorum, 
was carried thither. I was put into a carriage with 
some gentlemen whom I did not know. They were 



164 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

kind to me ; but naturally they talked of things discon- 
nected with the occasion, and their conversation was a 
torment. At the church, I was told to hold a white 
handkerchief to my eyes. Empty hypocrisy ! What 
need had he of masques or mockeries, whose heart 
died within him at every word that was uttered ? Dur- 
ing that part of the service which passed within the 
church, I made an effort to attend, but I sank back con- 
tinually into my own solitary darkness, and I heard 
little consciously, except some fugitive strains from the 
sublime chapter of St. Paul, which in England is 
always read at burials. And here I notice a profound 
error of our present illustrious Laureate. When I 
heard those dreadful words — for dreadful they were 
to me — " It is sown in corruption, it is raised in 
incorruption ; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in 
glory ; " such was the recoil of my feelings, that I 
could even have shrieked out a protesting — " Oh, no, 
no ! " if I had not been restrained by the publicity of 
the occasion. In after years, reflecting upon this re- 
volt of my feelings which, being the voice of nature 
in a child, must be as true as any mere opinion of a 
child might probably be false, I saw at once the un- 
soundness of a passage in The Excursion. The book 
is not here, but the substance I remember perfectly. 
Mr. Wordsworth argues, that if it were not for the 
unsteady faith which people fix upon the beatific con- 
dition after death of those whom they deplore, nobody 
could be found so selfish, as even secretly to wish for 
the restoration to earth of a beloved object. A mother, 
for instance, could never dream of yearning for her 
child, and secretly calling it back by her silent aspi- 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 165 

rations from the arms of God, if she were but recon- 
ciled to the belief that really it was in those arms. 
But this I utterly deny. To take my own case, when 
I heard those dreadful words of St. Paul applied to 
my sister, viz. that she should be raised a spiritual 
body, — nobody can suppose that selfishness, or any 
other feeling than that of agonizing love, caused the 
rebellion of my heart against them. I knew already 
that she was to come again in beauty and power. I 
did not now learn this for the first time. And that 
thought, doubtless, made my sorrow sublimer ; but 
also it made it deeper. For here lay the sting of it, 
viz. in the fatal words — " We shall be changed." 
How was the unity of my interest in her to be pre- 
served, if she were to be altered, and no longer to 
reflect in her sweet countenance the traces that were 
sculptured on my heart ? Let a magician ask any 
woman whether she will permit him to improve her 
child, to raise it even from deformity to perfect beauty, 
if that must be done at the cost of its identity, and 
there is no loving mother but would reject his proposal 
with horror. Or, to take a case that has actually 
happened, if a mother were robbed of her child at two 
years old by gipsies, and the same child were restored 
to her at twenty, a fine young man, but divided by a 
sleep as it were of death from all remembrances that 
could restore the broken links of their once tender 
connection, would she not feel her grief unhealed, and 
her heart defrauded ? Undoubtedly she would. All 
of us ask not of God for a better thing than that we 
have lost ; we ask for the same, even with its faults 
and its frailties. It is true that the sorrowing person 



166 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

will also be changed eventually, but that must be by 
death. And a prospect so remote as that, and so alien 
from our present nature, cannot console us in an afflic- 
tion which is not remote, but present — which is not 
spiritual, but human. 

Lastly came the magnificent service which the Eng- 
lish church performs at the side of the grave. There 
is exposed once again, and for the last time, the coffin. 
All eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age, 
and the day of departure from earth — records how 
useless ! and dropped into darkness as if messages 
addressed to worms. Almost at the very last comes 
the symbolic ritual, tearing and shattering the heart 
with volleying discharges, peal after peal, from the 
final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into its 
home ; it has disappeared from the eye. The sacris- 
tan stands ready with his shovel of earth and stones. 
The priest's voice is heard once more, — earth to 
earth, and the dread rattle ascends from the lid of the 
coffin ; ashes to ashes, and again the killing sound is 
heard ; dust to dust, and the farewell volley announces 
that the grave — the coffin — the face are sealed up 
for ever and ever. 



Oh, grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing 
passions. And true it is, that thou humblest to the 
dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest 
as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou 
sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. 
Among the very foremost of mine was morbid sensi- 
bility to shame. And ten years afterwards, I used to 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 167 

reproach myself with this infirmity, by supposing the 
case, that, if it were thrown upon me to seek aid for a 
perishing fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that 
aid only by facing a vast company of critical or sneer- 
ing faces, I might perhaps shrink basely from the duty. 
It is true, that no such case had ever actually occurred, 
so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax my- 
self with cowardice so shocking. But to feel a doubt, 
was to feel condemnation ; and the crime which might 
have been, was in my eyes the crime which had been. 
Now, however, all was changed ; and for anything 
which regarded my sister's memory, in one hour I re- 
ceived a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a 
case resembling it. I saw a ewe suddenly put off and 
abjure her own nature, in a service of love — yes, 
slough it as completely as ever serpent sloughed his 
skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from 
which all escape was hopeless without the aid of man. 
And to a man she advanced boldly, bleating clamor- 
ously, until he followed her and rescued her beloved. 
Not less was the change in myself. Fifty thousand 
sneering faces would not have troubled me in any office 
of tenderness to my sister's memory. Ten legions 
would not have repelled me from seeking her, if there 
was a chance that she could be found. Mockery ! it 
was lost upon me. Laugh at me, as one or two people 
did ! I valued not their laughter. And when I was 
told insultingly to cease " my girlish tears," that word 
"girlish" had no sting for me, except as a verbal 
echo to the one eternal thought of my heart — that a 
girl was the sweetest thing I, in my short life, had 
known — that a girl it was who had crowned the earth 



168 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

with beauty, and had opened to my thirst fountains of 
pure celestial love, from which, in this world, I was to 
drink no more. 

Interesting it is to observe how certainly all deep 
feelings agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and 
are nursed by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how 
naturally do these ally themselves with religious feel- 
ing ; and all three, love, grief, religion, are haunters of 
solitary places. Love, grief, the passion of reverie, or 
the mystery of devotion — what were these without 
solitude ? All day long, when it was not impossible 
for me to do so, I sought the most silent and seques- 
tered nooks in the grounds about the house, or in the 
neighboring fields. The awful stillness occasionally of 
summer noons, when no winds were abroad, the ap- 
pealing silence of gray or misty afternoons — these 
were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods or 
the desert air I gazed as if some comfort lay hid in 
them. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of be- 
seeching looks. I tormented the blue depths with 
obstinate scrutiny, sweeping them with my eyes and 
searching them for ever after one angelic face that 
might perhaps have permission to reveal itself for a 
moment. The faculty of shaping images in the dis- 
tance out of slight elements, and grouping them after 
the yearnings of the heart, aided by a slight defect in 
my eyes, grew upon me at this time. And I recall at 
the present moment one instance of that sort, which 
may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of bright- 
ness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient basis 
for this creative faculty. On Sunday mornings I was 
always taken to church : it was a church on the old 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 169 

and natural model of England, having aisles, galleries, 
organs, all things ancient and venerable, and the pro- 
portions majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt 
through the long litany, as often as we came to that 
passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where 
God is supplicated on behalf of " all sick persons and 
young children," and that he would " show his pity 
upon all prisoners and captives," — I wept in secret, 
and raising my streaming eyes to the windows of the 
galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a 
spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld. 
The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass ; 
through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the 
golden light ; emblazonries of heavenly illumination 
mingling with the earthly emblazonries of what is 
grandest in man. There were the apostles that had 
trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of 
celestial love to man. There were the martyrs that 
had borne witness to the truth through flames, through 
torments, and through armies of fierce insulting faces. 
There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, 
had glorified God by meek submission to his will. 
And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memo- 
rials held on as the deep chords from an accompani- 
ment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field 
of the window, where the glass was uncolored, white 
fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky ; 
were it but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud, im- 
mediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, 
it grew and shaped itself into a vision of beds with 
white lawny curtains ; and in the beds lay sick chil- 
dren, dying children, that were tossing in anguish, and 



170 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

weeping clamorously for death. God, for some mys- 
terious reason, could not suddenly release them from 
their pain ; but he suffered the beds, as it seemed, to 
rise slowly through the clouds ; slowly the beds ascen- 
ded into the chambers of the air ; slowly, also, his 
arms descended from the heavens, that he and his 
young children, whom in Judea, once and for ever, he 
had blessed, though they must, pass slowly through 
the dreadful chasm of separation, might yet meet the 
sooner. These visions were self-sustained. These 
visions needed not that any sound should speak to me, 
or music mould my feelings. The hint from the litany, 
the fragment from the clouds, those and the storied 
windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of 
the tumultuous organ wrought its own separate crea- 
tions. And oftentimes in anthems, when the mighty 
instrument threw its vast columns of sound, fierce yet 
melodious, over the voices of the choir — when it rose 
high in arches, as might seem, surmounting and over- 
riding the strife of the vocal parts, and gathering by 
strong coercion the total storm into unity — sometimes 
I seemed to walk triumphantly upon those clouds 
which so recently I had looked up to as mementos of 
prostrate sorrow, and even as ministers of sorrow in 
its creations ; yes, sometimes under the transfigurations 
of music I felt * of grief itself as a fiery chariot for 
mounting victoriously above the causes of grief. 



* " I felt." — The reader must not forget, in reading this and 
other passages, that, though a child's feelings are spoken of, it is 
not the child who speaks. 1 decipher what the child only felt in 
cipher. And so far is this distinction or this explanation from point- 
ing to any thing metaphysical or doubtful, that a man must be 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 171 

I point so often to the feelings, the ideas, or the cer- 
emonies of religion, because there never yet was pro- 
found grief nor profound philosophy which did not 
inosculate at many points with profound religion. But 
I request the reader to understand, that of all things I 
was not, and could not have been, a child trained to 
talk of religion, least of all to talk of it controversially 
or polemically. Dreadful is the picture, which in books 
we sometimes find, of children discussing the doctrines 
of Christianity, and even teaching their seniors the 
boundaries and distinctions between doctrine and doc- 
trine. And it has often struck me with amazement, 
that the two things which God made most beautiful 
among his works, viz. infancy and pure religion, should, 
by the folly of man (in yoking them together on erro- 
neous principles), neutralize each other's beauty, or 
even form a combination positively hateful. The re- 
ligion becomes nonsense, and the child becomes a 
hypocrite. The religion is transfigured into cant, and 
the innocent child into a dissembling liar.* 

grossly unobservant who is not aware of what I am here noticing, 
not as a peculiarity of this child or that, but as a necessity of all 
children. Whatsoever in a man's mind blossoms and expands to his 
own consciousness in mature life, must have pre-existed in germ dur- 
ing his infancy. I, for instance, did not, as a child, consciously read in 
my own deep feelings these ideas. No, not at all ; nor was it pos- 
sible for a child to do so. I, the child, had the feelings, I the man 
decipher them. In the child lay the handwriting mysterious to him; 
in me the interpretation and the comment. 

* I except, however, one case — the case of a child dying of an 
organic disorder, so therefore as to die slowly, and aware of its own 
condition. Because such a child is solemnized, and sometimes, in 
a partial sense, inspired, — inspired by the depth of its sufferings, 
and by the awfulness of its prospect. Such a child having put oft 
the earthly mind in many things, may naturally have put off the 



172 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

God, be assured, takes care for the religion of chil- 
dren wheresoever his Christianity exists. Wheresoever 
there is a national church established, to which a child 
sees his friends resorting ; wheresoever he beholds all 
whom he honors periodically prostrate before those 
illimitable heavens which fill to overflowing his young 
adoring heart ; wheresoever he sees the sleep of death 
falling at intervals upon men and women whom he 
knows, depth as confounding to the plummet of his 
mind as those heavens ascend beyond his power to 
pursue — there take you no thought for the religion of 
a child, any more than for the lilies how they shall be 
arrayed, or for the ravens how they shall feed their 
young. 

God speaks to children also in dreams, and by the 
oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above 
all things, when made vocal by the truths and services 
of a national church, God holds " communion undis- 
turbed " with children. Solitude, though silent as light, 
is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is 
essential to man. All men come into this world alone, 
all leave it alone. Even a little child has a dread, 
whispering consciousness, that if he should be sum- 
moned to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse 
will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to 
carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his tre- 
pidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, phi- 
childish mind in all things. I thereby, speaking for myself only, 
acknowledge to have read with emotion a record of a little girl, 
who, knowing herself for months to he amongst the elect of death, 
became anxious even to sickness of heart for what she called the 
conversion of her father. Her filial duty and reverence had been 
swallowed up in filial love. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 173 

losopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries 
alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world 
appals or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of 
a far deeper solitude through which already he has 
passed, and of another solitude deeper still, through 
which he has to pass : reflex of one solitude — prefigu- 
ration of another. 

Oh, burthen of solitude, that cleavest to man through 
every stage of his being — in his birth, which has been 
— in his life, which is — in his death, which shall be — 
mighty and essential solitude ! that wast, and art, and 
art to be ; — thou broodest, like the spirit of God moving 
upon the surface of the deeps, over every heart that 
sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom. Like the vast 
laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or 
less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the 
principles of all things, solitude for a child is the 
Agrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the 
solitude jn life of millions upon millions who, with 
hearts welling forth love, have none to love them. 
Deep is the solitude of those who, with secret griefs, 
have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those 
who, fighting with doubts or darkness, have none to 
counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these 
solitudes is that which broods over childhood, bringing 
before it at intervals the final solitude which watches 
for it, and is waiting for it within the gates of death. 
Reader, I tell you a truth, and hereafter I will convince 
you of this truth, that for a Grecian child solitude was 
nothing, but for a Christian child it has become the 
power of God and the mystery of God. Oh, mighty 
and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to 



174 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

be — thou, kindling under the torch of Christian reve- 
lations, art now transfigured for ever, and hast passed 
from a blank negation into a secret hieroglyphic from 
God, shadowing in the hearts of infancy the very dim- 
mest of his truths ! 

" But you forgot her" says the cynic ; " you hap- 
pened one day to forget this sister of yours. " Why 
not ? To cite the beautiful words of Wallenstein, 

" What pang 
Is permanent with man ? From the highest, 
As from the vilest thing of every day, 
He learns to wean himself. For the strong hours 
Conquer him." * 

Yes, there lies the fountain of human oblivions. It 
is time, the great conqueror, it is the "strong hours" 
whose batteries storm every passion of men. For, in 
the fine expression of Schiller, " Was verschmerzte 
nicht der mensch ? " What sorrow is in man that will 
not finally fret itself to sleep ? Conquering, at last, 
gates of brass, or pyramids of granite, why should it 
be a marvel to us, or a triumph to Time, that he is 
able to conquer a frail human heart. 

However, for this once my cynic must submit to be 
told that he is wrong. Doubtless, it is presumption in 
me to suggest that his sneers can ever go awry, any 
more than the shafts of Apollo. But still, however 
impossible such a thing is, in this one case it happens 
that they have. And when it happens that they do 
not, I will tell you, reader, why in my opinion it is ; 
and you will see that it warrants no exultation in the 

* Death of Wallenstein, Act v. Scene i, (Coleridge's Translation,) 
relating to his remembrances of the younger Piccolomini. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 175 

cynic. Repeatedly I have heard a mother reproaching 
herself, when the birth-day revolved of the little daugh- 
ter whom so suddenly she had lost, with her own in- 
sensibility that could so soon need a remembrancer of 
the day. But, besides, that the majority of people in 
this world (as being people called to labor) have no 
time left for cherishing grief by solitude and medita- 
tion, always it is proper to ask whether the memory of 
the lost person were chiefly dependent upon a visual 
image. No death is usually half so affecting as the 
death of a young child from two to five years old. 

But yet for the same reason which makes the grief 
more exquisite, generally for such a loss it is likely to 
be more perishable. Wherever the image, visually or 
audibly, of the lost person is more essential to the life 
of the grief, there the grief will be more transitory. 

Faces begin soon (in Shakspeare's fine expression) 
to " dislimn ; V features fluctuate ; combinations of fea- 
ture unsettle. Even the expression becomes a mere 
idea that you can describe to another, but not an image 
that you can reproduce for yourself. Therefore, it 
is that the faces of infants, though they are divine as 
flowers in a savanna of Texas, or as the carolling of 
birds in a forest, are, like flowers in Texas, and the 
carolling of birds in a forest, soon overtaken by the 
pursuing darkness that swallows up all things human. 
All glories of flesh vanish ; and this, the glory of in- 
fantine beauty seen in the mirror of the memory, soon- 
est of all. But when the departed person worked 
upon yourself by powers that were intellectual and 
moral — powers in the flesh, though not of the flesh, 
the memorials in your own heart become more sted- 



176 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

fast, if less affecting at the first. Now, in my sister 
were combined for me both graces — the graces of 
childhood, and the graces of expanding thought. Be- 
sides that, as regards merely the personal image, 
always the smooth rotundity of baby features must 
vanish sooner, as being less individual than the features 
in a child of eight, touched with a pensive tenderness, 
and exalted into a characteristic expression by a pre- 
mature intellect. 

Rarely do things perish from my memory that are 
worth remembering. Rubbish dies instantly. Hence 
it happens that passages in Latin or English poets 
which I never could have read but once (and that 
thirty years ago,) often begin to blossom anew when 
I am lying awake, unable to sleep. I become a dis- 
tinguished compositor in the darkness : and, with my 
aerial composing stick, sometimes I " set up " half a 
page of verses, that would be found tolerably correct 
if collated with the volume that I never had in my 
hand but once. I mention this in no spirit of boasting. 
Far from it ; for, on the contrary, amongst my mortifi- 
cations have been compliments to my memory, when, 
in fact, any compliment that I had merited was due to the 
higher faculty of an electric aptitude for seizing analo- 
gies, and by means of those aerial pontoons passing 
over like lightning from one topic to another. Still it 
is a fact, that this pertinacious life of memory for 
things that simply touch the ear without touching the 
consciousness, does in fact beset me. Said but once, 
said but softly, not marked at all, words revive before me 
in darkness and solitude ; and they arrange themselves 
gradually into sentences, but through an effort some- 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 177 

times of a distressing kind, to which I am in a manner 
forced to become a party. This being so, it was no 
great instance of that power, that three separate pas- 
sages in the funeral service, all of which but one had 
escaped my notice at the time, and even that ©ne as 
to the part I am going to mention, but all of which 
must have struck on my ear, restored themselves per- 
fectly when I was lying awake in bed ; and though 
struck by their beauty, I was also incensed by what 
seemed to me the harsh sentiment expressed in two of 
these passages. I will cite all the three in an abbre- 
viated form, both for my immediate purpose, and for 
the indirect purpose of giving to those unacquainted 
with the English funeral service some specimens of 
its beauty. 

The first passage was this, " Forasmuch as it hath 
pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy, to take 
unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, 
we therefore commit her body to the ground, earth to 
earth, ashes to ashes, dust, to dust, in sure and certain 
hope of the resurrection to eternal life.'" * * * 

I pause to remark that a sublime effect arises at this 
point through a sudden rapturous interpolation from 
the Apocalypse, which, according to the rubric, " shall 
be said or sung;" but always let it be sung, and by 
the full choir : — 

" I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, 
Write, from henceforth blessed are the dead which die 
in the Lord ; even so saith the Spirit ; for they rest 
from their labors." 

The second passage, almost immediately succeeding 
to this awful burst of heavenly trumpets, and the one 
12 



178 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

which more particularly offended me, though other- 
wise even then, in my seventh year, I could not but be 
touched by its beauty, was this : " Almighty God, 
with whom do live the spirits of them that depart 
hence *in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the 
faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of 
the flesh, are in joy and felicity ; we give thee hearty 
thanks that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sis- 
ter out of the miseries of this sinful world ; beseeching 
thee, that it may please thee of thy gracious goodness 
shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and 
to hasten thy kingdom." * * * * 

In what world was I living when a man (calling 
himself a man of God) could stand up publicly and 
give God " hearty thanks " that he had taken away 
my sister? But, young child, understand — taken her 
away from the miseries of this sinful world. Oh yes ! 
I hear what you say ; I understand that ; but that 
makes no difference at all. She being gone, this 
world doubtless (as you say) is a world of unhappiness. 
But for me ubi Cccsar, ibi Roma — where my sister 
was, there was paradise ; no matter whether in heaven 
above, or on the earth beneath. And he had taken 
her away, cruel priest ! of his " great mercy ! " I did 
not presume, child though I was, to think rebelliously 
against that. The reason was not any hypocritical or 
canting submission where my heart yielded none, but 
because already my deep musing intellect had per- 
ceived a mystery and a labyrinth in the economies of 
this world. God, I saw, moved not as we moved — 
walked not as we walked — thought not as we think. 
Still I saw no mercy to myself, a poor frail dependent 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 179 

creature, torn away so suddenly from the prop on 
which altogether it depended. Oh yes ! perhaps there 
was; and many years after I came to suspect it. 
Nevertheless it was a benignity that pointed far ahead ; 
such as by a child could not have been perceived, 
because then the great arch had not come round ; 
could not have been recognized if it had come round ; 
could not have been valued if it had even been dimly 
recognized. 

Finally, as the closing prayer in the whole service 
stood, this — which I acknowledged then, and now ac- 
knowledge as equally beautiful and consolatory ; for in 
this was no harsh peremptory challenge to the infirmi- 
ties of human grief as to a thing not meriting notice in 
a religious rite. On the contrary, there was a gracious 
condescension from the great apostle to grief, as to a 
passion that he might perhaps himself have partici- 
pated. 

" Oh, merciful God ! the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, in whom 
whosoever believeth shall live, though he die ; who also 
taught us by his holy apostle St. Paul not to be sorry, 
as men without hope, for them that sleep in him ; we 
meekly beseech thee, O Father ! to raise us from the 
death of sin unto the life of righteousness ; that, when 
we shall depart this life, we may rest in him as our 
hope is — that this our sister doth." 

Ah, that was beautiful ; that was heavenly ! We 
might be sorry, we had leave to be sorry ; only not 
without hope. And we were by hope to rest in Him, 
as this our sister doth. And howsoever a man may 
think that he is without hope, I, that have read the 



180 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

writing upon these great abysses of * grief, and viewed 
their shadows under the correction of mightier shadows 
from deeper abysses since then, abysses of aboriginal 
fear and eldest darkness, in which yet I believe that all 
hope had not absolutely died, know that he is in a nat- 
ural error. If, for a moment, I and so many others, 
wallowing in the dust of affliction, could yet rise up 
suddenly like the dry corpse * which stood upright in 
the glory of life when touched by the bones of the 
prophet ; if in those vast choral anthems, heard by my 
childish ear, the voice of God wrapt itself as in a cloud 
of music, saying — " Child, that sorrowest, I command 
thee to rise up and ascend for a season into my heaven 
of heavens," — then it was plain that despair, that the 
anguish of darkness, was not essential to such sorrow, 
but might come and go even as light comes and goes 
upon our troubled earth. 

Yes ! the light may come and go ; grief may wax 
and wane ; grief may sink ; and grief again may rise, 
as in impassioned minds oftentimes it does, even to the 
heaven of heavens ; but there is a necessity — that, if 
too much left to itself in solitude, finally it will descend 
into a depth from which there is no reascent ; into a 
disease which seems no disease ; into a languishing 
which, from its very sweetness, perplexes the mind, and 
is fancied to be very health. Witchcraft has seized 
upon you, nympholepsy has struck you. Now you 
rave no more. You acquiesce ; nay, you are passion- 

* " Like the dry corpse ichich stood upright." — See the Second 
Book of Kings, chap. xiii. v. 20 and 21. Thirty years ago this im- 
pressive incident was made the subject of a large altar-piece by Mr. 
Alston, an interesting American artist, then resident in London. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 181 

ately delighted in your condition. Sweet becomes the 
grave, because you also hope immediately to travel 
thither : luxurious is the separation, because only per- 
haps for a few weeks shall it exist for you ; and it will 
then prove but the brief summer night that had retarded 
a little, by a refinement of rapture, the heavenly dawn 
of reunion. Inevitable sometimes it is in solitude — 
that this should happen with minds morbidly medita- 
tive ; that, when we stretch out our arms in darkness, 
vainly striving to draw back the sweet faces that have 
vanished, slowly arises a new stratagem of grief, and 
we say — " Be it that they no more come back to us, 
yet what hinders but we should go to them ? " 

Perilous is that crisis for the young. In its effect 
perfectly the same as the ignoble witchcraft of the poor 
African Obeah,* this sublimer witchcraft of grief will, 
if left to follow its own natural course, terminate in the 
same catastrophe of death. Poetry, which neglects no 
phenomena that are interesting to the heart of man, 
has sometimes touched a little 

" On the sublime attractions of the grave." 

* " African Obeah." — Thirty years ago it would not have been 
necessary to say one word of the Obi or Obeah magic ; because at 
that time several distinguished writers (Miss Edgeworth, for in- 
stance, in her Belinda) had made use of this superstition in fictions, 
and because the remarkable history of Three-fingered Jack, a story 
brought upon the stage, had made the superstition notorious as a 
fact. Now, however, so long after the case has probably passed 
out of the public mind, it may be proper to mention — that when an 
Obeah man, i. c, a professor of this dark collusion with human 
fears and human credulity, had once woven his dreadful net of 
ghostly terrors, and had thrown it over his selected victim, vainly 
did that victim flutter, struggle, languish in the meshes ; unless the 
spells were reversed, he generally perished ; and without a wound, 
except from his own too domineering fancy. 



182 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

But you think that these attractions, existing at times 
for the adult, could not exist for the child. Understand 
that you are wrong. Understand that these attractions 
do exist for the child ; and perhaps as much more 
strongly than they can exist for the adult, by the whole 
difference between the concentration of a childish love, 
and the inevitable distraction upon multiplied objects of 
any love that can affect any adult. There is a German 
superstition (well known by a popular translation) of 
the Erl-king's Daughter, who fixes her love upon some 
child, and seeks to wile him away into her own shad- 
owy kingdom in forests. 

", Who is it that rides through the forest so fast ? " 

It is a knight, who carries his child before him on 
the saddle. The Erl-king's Daughter rides on his right 
hand, and still whispers temptations to the infant audible 
only to him. 

" If thou wilt, dear haby, with me go away, 
We will see a fine show, we will play a fine play." 

The consent of the baby is essential to her success. 
And finally she does succeed. Other charms, other 
temptations, would have been requisite for me. My 
intellect was too advanced for those fascinations. But 
could the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed herself to 
me, and promised to lead me where my sister was, she 
might have wiled me by the hand into the dimmest 
forests upon earth. Languishing was my condition at 
that time. Still I languished for things " which " (a 
voice from heaven seemed to answer through my own 
heart) " cannot be granted ; " and which, when again 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 183 

I languished, again the voice repeated, " cannot be 
granted." 



Well it was for me that, at this crisis, I was sum- 
moned to put on the harness of life by commencing my 
classical studies under one of my guardians, a clergy- 
man of the English Church, and (so far as regarded 
Latin) a most accomplished scholar. 

At the very commencement of my new studies, 
there happened an incident which afflicted me much 
for a short time, and left behind a gloomy impression, 
that suffering and wretchedness were diffused amongst 
all creatures that breathe. A person had given me a 
kitten. There are three animals which seem, beyond 
all others, to reflect the beauty of human infancy in 
two of its elements — viz. joy, and guileless innocence, 
though less in its third element of simplicity, because 
that requires language for its full expression : these 
three animals are the kitten, the lamb, and the fawn. 
Other creatures may be as happy, but they do not show 
it so much. Great was the love which poor silly I had 
for this little kitten ; but, as I left home at ten in the 
morning, and did not return till near five in the after- 
noon, 1 was obliged, with some anxiety, to throw it for 
those seven hours upon its own discretion, as infirm a 
basis for reasonable hope as could be imagined. I did 
not wish the kitten, indeed, at all less foolish than it 
was, except just when I was leaving home, and then its 
exceeding folly gave me a pang. Just about that time, 
it happened that we had received, as a present from 
Leicestershire, a fine young Newfoundland dog, who 



1S4 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

was under a cloud of disgrace for crimes of his youth- 
ful blood committed in that county. One day he had 
taken too great a liberty with a pretty little cousin of 

mine, Emma H , about four years old. He had, 

in fact, bitten off her cheek, which, remaining attached 
by a shred, was, through the energy of a governess, 
replaced, and subsequently healed without a scar. His 
name being Turk, he was immediately pronounced by 
the best Greek scholar of that neighborhood, i/io)wuog 
(i. e. named significantly, or reporting his nature in his 
name). But as Miss Emma confessed to having been 
engaged in taking away a bone from him, on which 
subject no dog can be taught to understand a joke, it 
did not strike our own authorities that he was to be 
considered in a state of reprobation ; and as our gar- 
dens (near to a great town) were, on account chiefly of 
melons, constantly robbed, it was held that a moderate 
degree of fierceness was rather a favorable trait in his 
character. My poor kitten, it was supposed, had been 
engaged in the same playful trespass upon Turk's 
property as my Leicestershire cousin, and Turk laid 
her dead on the spot. It is impossible to describe my 
grief when the case was made known to me at five 
o'clock in the evening, by a man's holding out the little 
creature dead : she that I had left so full of glorious 
life — life which even in a kitten is infinite — was now 
stretched in motionless repose. I remember that there 
was a large coal stack in the yard. I dropped my Latin 
books, sat down upon a huge block of coal, and burst 
into a passion of tears. The man, struck with my tu- 
multuous grief, hurried into the house ; and from the 
lower regions deployed instantly the women of the 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 185 

laundry and the kitchen. No one subject is so abso- 
lutely sacred, and enjoys so classical a sanctity among 
servant girls, as 1. Grief; and 2. Love which is un- 
fortunate. All the young women took me up in their 
arms and kissed me ; and last of all, an elderly woman 
who was the cook, not only kissed me, but wept so 
audibly, from some suggestion doubtless of grief per- 
sonal to herself, that I threw my arms about her neck 
and kissed her also. It is probable, as I now suppose, 
that some account of my grief for my sister had reach- 
ed them. Else I was never allowed to visit their region 
of the house. But, however that might be, afterwards 
it struck me, that if I had met with so much sympathy, 
or with any sympathy at all, from the servant chiefly 
connected with myself in the desolating grief I had 
suffered, possibly I should not have been so profoundly 
shaken. 

But did I in the mean time feel anger towards Turk? 
Not the least. And the reason was this : — My guar- 
dian, who taught me Latin, was in the habit of coming 
over and dining at my mother's table whenever he 
pleased. On these occasions he, who like myself pitied 
dependent animals, went invariably into the yard of the 
offices, taking me with him, and unchained the dogs. 
There were two — Grim, a mastiff, and Turk, our 
young friend. My guardian was a bold athletic man, 
and delighted in dogs. He told me, which also my 
own heart told me, that these poor dogs languished out 
their lives under this confinement. The moment that I 
and my guardian (ego et rex mens) appeared in sight of 
the two kennels, it is impossible to express the joy of 
the dogs. Turk was usually restless ; Grim slept away 



1S6 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

his life in surliness. But at the sight of us — of my 
little insignificant self and my six-foot guardian — both 
doss veiled with delisht. We unfastened their chains 
with our own hands, they licking our hands ; and as to 
myself, licking my miserable little face ; and at one 
bound they re-entered upon their natural heritage of 
joy. Always we took them through the fields, where 
they molested nothing, and closed with giving them a 
cold bath in the brook which bounded my father's pro- 
perty. What despair must have possessed our dogs 
when they were taken back to their hateful prisons! 
and I, for my part, not enduring to see their misery, 
slunk away when the rechaining commenced. It was 
in vain to tell me that all people, who had property 
out of doors to protect, chained up dogs in the same 
way ; this only proved the extent of the oppression ; 
for a monstrous oppression it did seem, that creatures, 
boiling with life and the desires of life, should be thus 
detained in captivity until they were set free by death. 
That liberation visited poor Grim and Turk sooner than 
any of us expected, for they were both poisoned within 
the year that followed by a party of burglars. At the 
end of that year I was reading the iEneid ; and it struck 
me, who remembered the howling recusancy of Turk, 
as a peculiarly fine circumstance, introduced amongst 
the horrors of Tartarus, that sudden gleam of powerful 
animals, full of life and conscious rights rebelling 

against chains : — 

" Ineque leonum 
Vincla recusantum." * 

* What follows, I think, (for book I have none of any kind where 
this paper is proceeding,) viz : et serd sub node rudentum, is proba- 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 187 

Virgil had doubtless picked up that gem in his visits at 
feeding-time to the cavca of the Roman amphitheatre. 
But the rights of brute creatures to a merciful forbear- 
ance on the part of man, could not enter into the fee- 
blest conceptions of one belonging to a nation that (al- 
though too noble to be wantonly cruel), yet in the same 
amphitheatre manifested so little regard even to human 
rights. Under Christianity, the condition of the brute 
has improved, and will improve much more. There is 
ample room. For I am sorry to say, that the com- 
monest vice of Christian children, too often surveyed 
with careless eyes by mothers, that in their human re- 
lations are full of kindness, is cruelty to the inferior 
creatures thrown upon their mercy. For my own 
part, what had formed the groundwork of my happi- 
ness (since joyous was my nature, though overspread 
with a cloud of sadness), had been from the first a 
heart overflowing with love. And I had drunk in too 
profoundly the spirit of Christianity from our many 
nursery readings, not to read also in its divine words 
the justification of my own tendencies. That which 
I desired, was the thing which I ought to desire ; the 
mercy that I loved was the mercy that God had 
blessed. From the sermon on the Mount resounded 
forever in my ears — "Blessed are the merciful!" 
I needed not to add — " For they shall obtain mercy." 
By lips so holy, and when standing in the atmosphere 
of truths so divine, simply to have been blessed — that 
was a sufficient ratification ; every truth so revealed, 

hly a mistake of Virgil's ; the lions did not roar because night was 
approaching, but because night brought with it their principal meal, 
and consequently the impatience of hunger. 



188 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

and so hallowed by position, starts into sudden life, 
and becomes to itself its own authentication, needing 
no proof to convince, needing no promise to allure. 

It may well be supposed, therefore, that, having 
so early awakened within me what may be philosophi- 
cally called the transcendental justice of Christianity, 
I blamed not Turk for yielding to the coercion of his 
nature. lie had killed the object of my love. But, 
besides that he was under the constraint of a primary 
appetite, Turk was himself the victim of a killing 
oppression. He was doomed to a fretful existence 
so long as he should exist at all. Nothing could recon- 
cile this to my benignity, which at that time rested 
upon two pillars — upon the deep, deep heart which 
God had given to me at my birth, and upon exquisite 
health. Up to the age of two, and almost through 
that entire space of twenty-four months, I had suilered 
from ague ; but when that left me, all germs and 
traces of ill health fled away forever, except only such 
(and those how curable!) as I inherited from my 
school-boy distresses in London, or had created by 
means of opium. Even the long ague was not without 
ministrations of favor to my prevailing temper ; and 
on the whole, no subject for pity ; since naturally it 
won for me the sweet caresses of female tenderness, 
both young and old. I was a little petted ; but you 
see by this time, reader, that I must have been too 
much of a philosopher, even in the year one ab urbe 
conditd of my frail earthly tenement, to abuse such 
indulgence. It also won for me a ride on horseback 
whenever the weather permitted. I was placed on a 
pillow, in front of a cankered old man, upon a large 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 189 

white horse, not so young as I was, hut still showing 
traces of hlood. And even the old man, who was 
both the oldest and the worst of the three, talked with 
gentleness to myself, reserving his surliness for all the 
rest of the world. 

These things pressed with a gracious power of incu- 
bation upon my predispositions ; and in my overflowing 
love I did things fitted to make the reader laugh, and 
sometimes fitted to bring myself into perplexity. One 
instance from a thousand may illustrate the combi- 
nation of both effects. At four years old, I bad repeat- 
edly seen the housemaid raising her long broom and 
pursuing (generally destroying) a vagrant spider. 
The holiness of all life, in my eyes, forced me to 
devise plots for saving the poor doomed wretch ; and 
thinking intercession likely to prove useless, my policy 
was, to draw off the housemaid on pretence of show- 
ing her a picture, until the spider, already en route, 
should have had time to escape. Very soon, however, 
the shrewd housemaid, marking the coincidence of 
these picture exhibitions with the agonies of fugitive 
spiders, detected my stratagem; so that, if the reader 
will pardon an expression borrowed from the street, 
henceforwards the picture was 4 ' no go." However, as 
she approved of my motive, she told me of the many 
murders that the spider had committed, and next 
(which was worse) of the many that he certainly would 
commit if reprieved. This Staggered me. I could 
have gladly forgiven the past ; but it did seem a false 
mercy to spare one spider in order to scatter death 
amongst fifty flies. 1 thought timidly for a moment, 
of suggesting that people sometimes repented, and that 



190 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

he might repent ; but I checked myself, on considering 
that I had never read any account, and that she might 
laugh at the idea of a penitent spider. To desist was a 
necessity in these circumstances. But the difficulty 
which the housemaid had suggested, did not depart; 
it troubled my musing mind to perceive, that the wel- 
fare of one creature might stand upon the ruin of 
another ; and the case of the spider remained thence- 
fonvards even more perplexing to my understanding 
than it was painful to my heart. 

The reader is likely to differ from me upon the ques- 
tion, moved by recurring to such experiences of child- 
hood, whether much value attaches to the perceptions 
and intellectual glimpses of a child. Children, like 
men, range through a gamut that is infinite, of tem- 
peraments and characters, ascending from the very 
dust below our feet to highest heaven. I have seen 
children that were sensual, brutal, devilish. But, 
thanks be to the vis medicatrix of human nature, and 
to the goodness of God, these are as rare exhibitions 
as all other monsters. People thought, when seeing 
such odious travesties and burlesques upon lovely hu- 
man infancy, that perhaps the little wretches might be 
kilcrops* Yet, possibly (it has since occurred to me) 
even these children of the fiend, as they seemed, might 
have one chord in their horrible natures that answered 
to the call of some sublime purpose. There is a 
mimic instance of this kind, often found amongst our- 
selves in natures that are not really " horrible, 1 ' but 

*" Kilcrops." — See, amongst Southey's early poems, one upon 
this superstition. Southey argues contra; but for my part, I should 
have been more disposed to hold a brief on the other side. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 191 

which seem such to persons viewing them from a 
station not sufficiently central: — Always there are 
mischievous boys in a neighborhood, boys who tie canis- 
ters to the tails of cats belonging to ladies — a thing 
which greatly I disapprove; and who rob orchards — 
a thing which slightly I disapprove ; and behold ! the 
next day, on meeting the injured ladies, they say to 
me, " Oh, my dear friend, never pretend to argue for 
him ! This boy, we shall all see will come to be 
hanged." Well, that seems a disagreeable prospect 
for all parties ; so I change the subject ; and lo ! five 
years later, there is an English frigate fighting with a 
frigate of heavier metal (no matter of what nation). 
The noble captain has manoeuvred, as only his coun- 
trymen can manoeuvre ; he has delivered his broad- 
sides, as only the proud islanders can deliver them. 
Suddenly he sees the opening for a coup-de-main ; 
through his speaking-trumpet he shouts, '' Where are 
my hoarders ? " And instantly rise upon the deck, 
with the gaiety of boyhood, in white shirt sleeves 
bound with black ribands, fifty men, the elite of the 
crew ; and behold ! at the very head of them, cutlass 
in hand, is our friend the tyer of canisters to the tails 
of ladies' cats — a thing which greatly I disapprove, 
and also the robber of orchards — a thing which slight- 
ly I disapprove. But here is a man that will not suffer 
you either greatly or slightly to disapprove him. Fire 
celestial burns in his eye ; his nation, his glorious 
nation, is in his mind ; himself he regards no more 
than the life of a cat, or the ruin of a canister. On 
the deck of the enemy he throws himself with rapture ; 
and if he is amongst the killed, if he for an object so 



192 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

gloriously unselfish lays down with joy his life and 
glittering youth, mark this, that, perhaps, he will not 
be the least in heaven. 

But coming back to the case of childhood, I maintain 
stedfastly, that, into all the elementary feelings of man, 
children look with more searching gaze than adults. 
My opinion is, that where circumstances favor, where 
the heart is deep, where humility and tenderness exist 
in strength, where the situation is favorable as to soli- 
tude and as to genial feelings, children have a specific 
power of contemplating the truth, which departs as 
they enter the world. It is clear to me, that children, 
upon elementary paths which require no knowledge 
of the world to unravel, tread more firmly than men ; 
have a more pathetic sense of the beauty which lies 
in justice ; and, according to the immortal ode of our 
great laureate [ode " On the Intimations of Immortality 
in Childhood"] a far closer communion with God. 
I, if you observe, do not much intermeddle with re- 
ligion, properly so called. My path lies on the inter- 
space between religion and philosophy, that connects 
them both. Yet here for once I shall trespass on 
grounds not properly mine, and desire you to observe 
in St. Matthew, chap, xxi., and v. 15, who were those 
that, crying in the temple, made the first public re- 
cognition of Christianity. Then, if you say, " Oh, but 
children echo what they hear and are no independent 
authorities ! " I must request you to extend your 
reading into v. 16, where you will find that the testi- 
mony of these children, as bearing an original value, 
was ratified by the highest testimony ; and the recog- 
nition of these children did itself receive a heavenly 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 193 

recognition. And this could not have been, unless 
there were children in Jerusalem who saw into truth 
with a far sharper eye than Sanhedrims and Rabbis. 

It is impossible, with respect to any memorable 
grief, that it can be adequately exhibited so as to 
indicate the enormity of the convulsion which really it 
caused, without viewing it under a variety of aspects, 
a thing which is here almost necessary for the effect 
of proportion to what follows : 1st, for instance, in its 
immediate pressure, so stunning and confounding ; 
2dly, in its oscillations, as in its earlier agitations, 
frantic with tumults, that borrow the wings of the 
winds ; or in its diseased impulses of sick languishing 
desire, through which sorrow transforms itself to a 
sunny angel, that beckons us to a sweet repose. These 
phases of revolving affection I have already sketched. 
And I shall also sketch a third, i. e. where the afflic- 
tion, seemingly hushing itself to sleep, suddenly soars 
upwards again upon combining with another mode of 
sorrow, viz. anxiety without definite limits, and the 
trouble of a reproaching conscience. As sometimes,* 
upon the English lakes, waterfowl that have careered 
in the air until the eye is wearied with the eternal 
wheelings of their inimitable flight — Grecian sim- 
plicities of motion, amidst a labyrinthine infinity of 
curves that would baffle the geometry of Apollonius 
— seek the water at last, as if with some settled pur- 
pose (you imagine) of reposing. Ah, how little have 

* In this place I derive my feeling partly from a lovely sketch of 
the appearance, in verse, by Mr. Wordsworth ; partly from my own 
experience of the case ; and, not having the poems here, I know not 
how to proportion my acknowledgments. 
13 



194 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

you understood the omnipotence of that life which they 
inherit ! They want no rest : they laugh at resting ; 
all is u make believe," as when an infant hides its 
laughing face behind its mother's shawl. For a mo- 
ment it is still. Is it meaning to rest ? Will its im- 
patient heart endure to lurk there for long ? Ask 
rather if a cataract will stop from fatigue. Will a 
sunbeam sleep on its travels ? Or the Atlantic rest 
from its labors ? As little can the infant, as little can 
the waterfowl of the lakes, suspend their play, exce'pt 
as a variety of play, or rest unless when nature com- 
pels them. Suddenly starts off the infant, suddenly 
ascend the birds, to new evolutions as incalculable as 
the caprices of a kaleidoscope ; and the glory of their 
motions, from the mixed immortalities of beauty and 
inexhaustible variety, becomes at least pathetic to sur- 
vey. So also, and with such life of variation, do the 
primary convulsions of nature, such, perhaps, as only 
primary * formations in the human system can expe- 
rience, come round again and again by reverberating 
shocks. 



* " And so, then," the cynic objects, "you rank your own mind 
(and you tell us so frankly) amongst the primary formations? " As 
I love to annoy him, it would give me pleasure to reply — " Perhaps 
I do." But as I never answer more questions than are necessary, I 
confine myself to saying, that this is not a necessary construction of 
the words. Some minds stand nearer to the type of the original 
nature in man, are truer than others to the great magnet in our dark 
planet. Minds that are impassioned on a more colossal scale than 
ordinary, deeper in their vibrations, and more extensive in the scale 
of their vibrations, whether, in other parts of their intellectual sys- 
tem, they had or had not a corresponding compass, will tremble 
to greater depths from a fearful convulsion, and will come round by 
a longer curve of undulations. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 195 

The new intercourse with my guardian, and the 
changes of scene which naturally it led to, were of 
use in weaning my mind from the mere disease which 
threatened it in case I had been left any longer to my 
total solitude. But out of these changes grew an inci- 
dent which restored my grief, though in a more 
troubled shape, and now for the first time associated 
with something like remorse and deadly anxiety. I 
can safely say that this was my earliest trespass, and 
perhaps a venial one, all things considered. Nobody 
ever discovered it ; and but for my own frankness it 
would not be known to this day. But that I could not 
know ; and for years, that is from seven or earlier up 
to ten, such was my simplicity, that I lived in constant 
terror. This, though it revived my grief, did me 
probably great service ; because it was no longer a 
state of languishing desire tending to torpor, but of 
feverish irritation and gnawing care that kept alive the 
activity of my understanding. The case was this : — 
It happened that I had now, and commencing with my 
first introduction to Latin studies, a large weekly allow- 
ance of pocket-money, too large for my age, but safely 
intrusted to myself, who never spent or desired to 
spend one fraction of it upon anything but books. But 
all proved too little for my colossal schemes. Had the 
Vatican, the Bodleian, and the Bibliotheque du Roi 
been all emptied into one collection for my private 
gratification, little progress would have been made 
towards content in this particular craving. Very soon 
I had run ahead of my allowance, and was about three 
guineas deep in debt. There I paused ; for deep 
anxiety now began to oppress me as to the course in 



196 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

which this mysterious (and indeed guilty) current of 
debt would finally flow. For the present it was frozen 
up ; but I had some reason for thinking that Christmas 
thawed all debts whatsoever, and set them in motion 
towards innumerable pockets. Now my debt would be 
thawed with all the rest ; and in what direction would 
it flow ? There was no river that would carry it off to 
sea ; to somebody's pocket it would beyond a doubt 
make its way ; and who was that somebody ? This 
question haunted me for ever. Christmas had come, 
Christmas had gone, and I heard nothing of the three 
guineas. But I was not easier for that. Far rather I 
would have heard of it; for this indefinite approach of 
a loitering catastrophe gnawed and fretted my feelings. 
No Grecian audience ever waited with more shudder- 
ing horror for the anagnorisis * of the (Edipus, than I 
for the explosion of my debt. Had I been less igno- 
rant, I should have proposed to mortgage my weekly 
allowance for the debt, or to form a sinking fund for 
redeeming it ; for the weekly sum was nearly five per 
cent, on the entire debt. But I had a mysterious awe 
of ever alluding to it. This arose from my want of 
some confidential friend ; whilst my grief pointed con- 
tinually to the remembrance, that so it had not al- 
ways been. But was not the bookseller to blame in 
suffering a child scarcely seven years old to contract 
such a debt ? Not in the least. He was both a rich 



* i. e. (As on account of English readers is added), the recog- 
nition of his true identity, which, in one moment, and by a horrid 
flash of revelation, connects him with acts incestuous, murderous, 
parricidal in the past, and with a mysterious fatality of woe lurking 
in the future. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 197 

man, who could not possibly care for my trifling cus- 
tom, and notoriously an honorable man. Indeed the 
money which I myself spent every week in books, 
would reasonably have caused him to presume that so 
small a sum as three guineas might well be authorized 
by my family. He stood, however, on plainer ground, 
for my guardian, who was very indolent, (as people 
chose to call it,) that is, like his little melancholy 
ward, spent all his time in reading, often enough would 
send me to the bookseller's with a written order for 
books. This was to prevent my forgetting. But when 
he found that such a thing as " forgetting " in the case 
of a book, was wholly out of the question for me, the 
trouble of writing was dismissed. And thus I had 
become factor-general on the part of my guardian, both 
for his books, and for such as were wanted on my 
own account in the natural course of my education. 
My private " little account " had therefore in fact 
flowed homewards at Christmas, not (as I anticipated,) 
in the shape of an independent current, but as a little 
tributary rill that was lost in the waters of some more 
important river. This I now know, but could not then 
have known with any certainty. So far, however, the 
affair would gradually have sunk out of my anxieties as 
time wore on. But there was another item in the case, 
which, from the excess of my ignorance, preyed upon 
my spirits far more keenly ; and this, keeping itself 
alive, kept also the other incident alive. With respect 
to the debt, I was not so ignorant as to think it of much 
danger by the mere amount ; my own allowance 
furnished a scale for preventing that mistake ; it was 
the principle, the having presumed to contract debts on 



198 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

my own account, that I feared to have exposed. But 
this other case was a ground for anxiety even as re- 
garded the amount ; not really, but under the jesting 
representation made to me, which I (as ever before 
and after) swallowed in perfect faith. Amongst the 
books which I had bought, all English, was a history of 
Great Britain, commencing, of course, with Brutus and 
a thousand years of impossibilities ; these fables being 
generously thrown in as a little gratuitous extra to the 
mass of truths which were to follow. This was to be 
completed in sixty or eighty parts, I believe. But 
there was another work left more indefinite as to its 
ultimate extent, and which, from its nature, seemed to 
imply a far higher range. It was a general history of 
navigation, supported by a vast body of voyages. 
Now, when I considered with myself what a huge 
thing the sea was, and that so many thousands of cap- 
tains, commodores, admirals, were eternally running 
up and down it, and scoring lines upon its face so rank- 
ly, that in some of the main " streets " and " squares " 
(as one might call them), their tracks would blend into 
one undistinguishable blot, I began to fear that such a 
work tended to infinity. What was little England 
to the universal sea ? And yet that went perhaps to 
fourscore parts. Not enduring the uncertainty that now 
besieged my tranquillity, I resolved to know the worst ; 
and on a day ever memorable to me I went down to the 
bookseller's. He was a mild elderly man, and to my- 
self had always shown a kind indulgent manner. Part- 
ly perhaps he had been struck by my extreme gravity . 
and partly, during the many conversations I had with 
him, on occasion of my guardian's orders for books, 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 199 

with my laughable simplicity. But there was another 
reason which had early won for me his paternal 
regard. For the first three or four months I had found 
Latin something of a drudgery ; and the incident 
which for ever knocked away the " shores," at that 
time preventing my launch upon the general bosom of 
Latin literature, was this : — One day the bookseller 
took down a Beza's Latin Testament; and, opening 
it, asked me to translate for him the chapter which he 
pointed to. I was struck by perceiving that it was the 
great chapter of St. Paul on the grave and resur- 
rection. I had never seen a Latin version ; yet from 
the simplicity of the scriptural style in any translation 
(though Beza's is far from good), I could not well have 
failed in construing. But as it happened to be this par- 
ticular chapter, which in English I had read again and 
again with so passionate a sense of its grandeur, I read 
it off with a fluency and effect like some great opera 
singer uttering a rapturous bravura. My kind old 
friend expressed himself gratified, making me a present 
of the book as a mark of his approbation. And it is 
remarkable, that from this moment, when the deep 
memory of the English words had forced me into see- 
ing the precise correspondence of the two concurrent 
streams — Latin and English — never again did any 
difficulty arise to check the velocity of my progress in 
this particular language. At less than eleven years of 
age, when as yet I was a very indifferent Grecian, I 
had become a brilliant master of Latinity, as my al- 
caics and choriambics remain to testify ; and the whole 
occasion of a change so memorable to a boy, was this 
casual summons to translate a composition with which 



200 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

my heart was filled. Ever after this he showed me a 
caressing kindness, and so condescendingly, that gen- 
erally he would leave any people for a moment with 
whom he was engaged, to come and speak to me. On 
this fatal day, however, for such it proved to me, he 
could not do this. He saw me, indeed, and nodded, 
but could not leave a party of elderly strangers. This 
accident threw me unavoidably upon one of his young 
people. Now this was a market day, and there was a 
press of country people present, whom I did not wish 
to hear my question. Never did a human creature, 
with his heart palpitating at Delphi for the solution of 
some killing mystery, stand before the priestess of the 
oracle, with lips that moved more sadly than mine, 
when now advancing to a smiling young man at a desk. 
His answer was to decide, though I could not exactly 
know thai, whether for the next two years, I was to 
have an hour of peace. He was a handsome, good- 
natured young man, but full of fun and frolic ; and I 
dare say was amused with what must have seemed to 
him the absurd anxiety of my features. I described 
the work to him, and he understood me at once : how 
many volumes did he think it would extend to ? 
There was a whimsical expression, perhaps, of drol- 
lery about his eyes, but which unhappily, under my 
preconceptions, I translated into scorn, as he replied, 
" How many volumes ? Oh ! really I can't say, may- 
be a matter of 15,000, be the same more or less." 
" More ? " I said in horror, altogether neglecting the 
contingency of " less." u Why," he said, " we can't 
settle these things to a nicety. But, considering the 
subject " [ay, that was the very thing which I myself 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 201 

considered], " I should say, there might be some trifle 
over, as suppose 400 or 500 volumes, be the same 
more or less." What, then, here there might be 
supplements to supplements — the work might posi- 
tively never end. On one pretence or another, if an 
author or publisher might add 500 volumes, he might 
add another round 15,000. Indeed it strikes one even 
now, that by the time all the one-legged commodores 
and yellow admirals of that generation had exhausted 
their long yarns, another generation would have grown 
another crop of the same gallant spinners. I asked no 
more, but slunk out of the shop, and never again 
entered it with cheerfulness, or propounded any frank 
questions as heretofore. For I was now seriously 
afraid of pointing attention to myself as one that, by 
having purchased some numbers, and obtained others 
on credit, had silently contracted an engagement to 
take all the rest, though they should stretch to the 
crack of doom. Certainly I had never heard of a work 
that extended to 15,000 volumes; but still there was 
no natural impossibility that it should ; and, if in any 
case, in none so reasonably as one upon the inexhaust- 
ible sea. Besides, any slight mistake as to the letter 
of the number, could not affect the horror of the final 
prospect. I saw by the imprint, and I heard, that this 
work emanated from London, a vast centre of mystery 
to me, and the more so, as a thing unseen at any time 
by my eyes, and nearly 200 miles distant. I felt the 
fatal truth, that here was a ghostly cobweb radiating 
into all the provinces from the mighty metropolis. I 
secretly had trodden upon the outer circumference, 
had damaged or deranged the fine threads or links — 



202 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

concealment or reparation there could be none. Slow- 
ly perhaps, but surely, the vibration would travel back 
to London. The ancient spider that sat there at the 
centre, would rush along the network through all longi- 
tudes and latitudes, until he found the responsible 
caitiff, author of so much mischief. Even, with less 
ignorance than mine, there was something to appal a 
child's imagination in the vast systematic machinery 
by which any elaborate work could disperse itself, could 
levy money, could put questions and get answers — 
all in profound silence, nay, even in darkness, search- 
ing every nook of every town, and of every hamlet in 
so populous a kingdom. I had some dim terrors, also, 
connected with the Stationers' Company. I had often 
observed them in popular works threatening unknown 
men with unknown chastisements, for offences equally 
unknown ; nay, to myself, absolutely inconceivable. 
Could I be the mysterious criminal so long pointed out, 
as it were, in prophecy ? I figured the stationers, doubt- 
less all powerful men, pulling at one rope, and my un- 
happy self hanging at the other end. But an image, 
which seems now even more ludicrous than the rest, at 
that time, was the one most connected with the revival 
of my grief. It occurred to my subtlety, that the Station- 
ers' Company, or any other company, could not pos- 
sibly demand the money until they had delivered the 
volumes. And, as no man could say that I had ever 
positively refused to receive them, they would have no 
pretence for not accomplishing this delivery in a civil 
manner. Unless I should turn out to be no customer 
at all, at present it was clear that I had a right to be 
considered a most excellent customer ; one, in fact, 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 203 

who had given an order for fifteen thousand volumes. 
Then rose up before me this great opera-house " sce- 
na" of the delivery. There would be a ring at the 
front door. A wagoner in the front with a bland 
voice, would ask for " a young gentleman who had 
given an order to their house." Looking out, I should 
perceive a procession of carts and wagons, all advan- 
cing in measured movements ; each in turn would pre- 
sent its rear, deliver its cargo of volumes, by shooting 
them, like a load of coals on the lawn, and wheel off to 
the rear, by way of clearing the road for its successors. 
Then the impossibility of even asking the servants 
to cover with sheets or counterpanes, or tablecloths, 
such a mountainous, such a " star-y-pointing " record 
of my past offences, lying in so conspicuous a situ- 
ation ! Men would not know my guilt merely, they 
would see it. But the reason why this form of the 
consequences, so much more than any other, stuck 
by my imagination was, that it connected itself with 
one of the Arabian Nights which had particularly in- 
terested myself and my sister. It was that tale, where 
a young porter, having his ropes about his person, had 
stumbled into the special " preserve " of some old 
magician. He finds a beautiful lady imprisoned, to 
whom (and not without prospects of success) he re- 
commends himself as a suitor, more in harmony with 
her own years than a withered magician. At this 
crisis the magician returns. The young man bolts, 
and for that day successfully ; but unluckily he leaves 
his ropes behind. Next morning he hears the ma- 
gician, too honest by half, inquiring at the front door, 
with much expression of condolence, for the unfortunate 



204 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

young man who had lost his ropes in his own zenana. 
Upon this story I used to amuse my sister, by ven- 
triloquizing to the magician from the lips of the trem- 
bling young man — " Oh, Mr. Magician, these ropes 
cannot be mine ! They are far too good ; and one 
wouldn't like, you know, to rob some other poor young 
man. If you please, Mr. Magician, I never had money 
enough to buy so beautiful a set of ropes." But argu- 
ment is thrown away upon a magician, and off he sets 
on his travels with the young porter, not forgetting to 
take the ropes along with him. 

Here now was the case, that had once seemed so 
impressive to me in a mere fiction from a far distant 
age and land, literally reproduced in myself. For 
what did it matter whether a magician dunned one 
with old ropes for his engine of torture, or Stationers' 
Hall with 15,000 volumes (in the rear of which there 
might also be ropes) ? Should I have ventriloquized, 
would my sister have laughed, had either of us but 
guessed the possibility that I myself, and within one 
twelve months, and, alas! standing alone in the world 
as regarded confidential counsel, should repeal within 
my own inner experience the shadowy panic of the 
young Bagdat intruder upon the privacy of magicians? 
It appeared, then, that I had been reading a legend 
concerning myself in the Arabian Nights. I had been 
contemplated in types a thousand years before on the 
banks of the Tigris. It was horror and grief that 
prompted that thought. 

Oh, heavens ! that the misery of a child should by 
possibility become the laughter of adults! — that even 
I, the sufferer, should be capable of amusing myself, 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 205 

as if it had been a jest, with what for three years had 
constituted the secret affliction of my life, and its eter- 
nal trepidation — like the ticking of a death-watch to 
patients lying awake in the plague. I durst ask no 
counsel ; there was no one to ask. Possibly my sister 
could have given me none in a case which neither of 
us should have understood, and where to seek for infor- 
mation from others, would have been at once to betray 
the whole reason for seeking it. But, if no advice, she 
would have given me her pity, and the expression of 
her endless love ; and, with the relief of sympathy, 
that heals for a season all distresses, she would have 
given me that exquisite luxury — the knowledge that, 
having parted with my secret, yet also I had not parted 
with it, since it was in the power only of one that could 
much less betray me than I could betray myself. At 
this time, that is about the year when I suffered most, I 
was reading Caesar. Oh, laurelled scholar — sunbright 
intellect — "foremost man of all this world" — how 
often did I make out of thy immortal volume a pillow 
to support my wearied brow, as at evening, on my 
homeward road, I used to turn into some silent field, 
where I might give way unobserved to the reveries 
which besieged me! I wondered, and found no end of 
wondering, at the revolution that one short year had 
made in my happiness. I wondered that such billows 
could overtake me ! At the beginning of that year 
how radiantly happy ! At the end how insupportably 
alone ! 

" Into what depth thou scest, 
From what height fallen." 

For ever I searched the abysses with some wandering 



206 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

thoughts unintelligible to myself. For ever I dallied 

with some obscure notion, how my sister's love might 

be made in some dim way available for delivering me 

from misery ; or else how the misery I had suffered 

and was suffering might be made, in some way equally 

dim, the ransom for winning back her love. 

* * * ***** 

Here pause, reader ! Imagine yourself seated in 
some cloud-scaling swing, oscillating under the im- 
pulse of lunatic hands ; for the strength of lunacy may 
belong to human dreams, the fearful caprice of lunacy, 
and the malice of lunacy, whilst the victim of those 
dreams may be all the more certainly removed from 
lunacy; even as a bridge gathers cohesion and strength 
from the increasing resistance into which it is forced 
by increasing pressure. Seated in such a swing, fast 
as you reach the lowest point of depression, may you 
rely on racing up to a starry altitude of corresponding 
ascent. Ups and downs you will see, heights and 
depths, in our fiery course together, such as will some- 
times tempt you to look shyly and suspiciously at me, 
your guide, and the ruler of the oscillations. Here at 
the point where I have called a halt, the reader has 
reached the lowest depth in my nursery afflictions. 
From that point, according to the principles of art 
which govern the movement of these Confessions, I 
had meant to launch him upwards through the whole 
arch of ascending visions which seemed requisite to 
balance the sweep downwards, so recently described 
in his course. But accidents of the press have made 
it impossible to accomplish this purpose in the present 
month's journal. There is reason to regret that the 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 207 

advantages of position, which were essential to the full 
effect of passages planned for the equipoise and mutual 
resistance, have thus been lost. Meantime, upon the 
principle of the mariner, who rigs a jury-mast in de- 
fault of his regular spars, I find my resource in 
a sort of " jury " peroration, not sufficient in the 
way of a balance by its proportions, but sufficient to 
indicate the quality of the balance which I had con- 
templated. He who has really read the preceding 
parts of these present Confessions, will be aware that 
a stricter scrutiny of the past, such as was natural after 
the whole economy of the dreaming faculty had been 
convulsed beyond all precedents on record, led me to 
the conviction that not one agency, but two agencies, 
had cooperated to the tremendous result. The nur- 
sery experience had been the ally and the natural 
coefficient of the opium. For that reason it was that 
the nursery experience has been narrated. Logically, 
it bears the very same relation to the convulsions of 
the dreaming faculty as the opium. The idealizing 
tendency existed in the dream-theatre of my child- 
hood ; but the preternatural strength of its action and 
coloring was first developed after the confluence of 
the Uvo causes. The reader must suppose me at 
Oxford ; twelve years and a half are gone by ; I am 
in the glory of youthful happiness ; but I have now 
first tampered with opium ; and now first the agitations 
of my childhood reopened in strength, now first they 
swept in upon the brain with power, and the grandeur 
of recovered life, under the separate and the concur- 
ring inspirations of opium. 

Once again, after twelve years' interval, the nursery 



SOS A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

of my childhood expanded before me ; my sister was 
moaning in bed ; I was beginning to be restless with 
fears not intelligible to myself. Once again the nurse, 
but now dilated to colossal proportions, stood as upon 
some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand, and like 
the superb Medea standing alone with her children 
in the nursery at Corinth,* smote me senseless to the 
ground. Again, I was in the chamber with my sister's 
corpse, again the pomps of life rose up in silence, the 
glory of summer, the frost of death. Dream formed 
itself mysteriously within dream ; within these Oxford 
dreams remoulded itself continually the trance in my 
sister's chamber, — the blue heavens, the everlasting 
vault, the soaring billows, the throne steeped in the 
thought (but not the sight) of " Him that sate there- 
on ; " the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps 
of my return to earth. Once more the funeral pro- 
cession gathered ; the priest in his white surplice 
stood waiting with a book in his hand by the side of 
an open grave, the sacristan with his shovel ; the coffin 
sank ; the dust to dust descended. Again I was in 
the church on a heavenly Sunday morning. The 
golden sunlight of God slept amongst the heads of his 
apostles, his martyrs, his saints ; the fragment from 
the litany, the fragment from the clouds, awoke 
again the lawny beds that went up to scale the heavens 
— awoke again the shadowy arms that moved down- 
ward to meet them. Once again, arose the swell of 
the anthem, the burst of the Hallelujah chorus, the 
storm, the trampling movement of the choral pas- 



* Euripides. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 209 

sion, the agitation of my own trembling sympathy, 
the tumult of the choir, the wrath of the organ. 
Once more I, that wallowed, became he that rose up 
to the clouds. And now in Oxford, all was bound up 
into unity ; the first state and the last were melted 
into each other as in some sunny glorifying haze. 
For high above my own station, hovered a gleaming 
host of heavenly beings, surrounding the pillows of 
the dying children. And such beings sympathize 
equally with sorrow that grovels and with sorrow that 
soars. Such beings pity alike the children that are 
languishing in death, and the children that live only 
to lansuish in tears. 



THE PALIMPSEST. 



You know perhaps, masculine reader, better than I 
can tell you, what is a Palimpsest. Possibly you have 
one in your own library. But yet, for the sake of others 
who may not know, or may have forgotten, suffer mc 
to explain it here, lest any female reader, who honors 
these papers with her notice, should tax me with 
explaining it once too seldom ; which would be worse 
to bear than a simultaneous complaint from twelve- 
proud men, that I had explained it three times too often. 
You therefore, fair reader, understand that for your 
accommodation exclusively, I, explain the meaning of 
this word. It is Greek ; and our sex enjoys the office 
and privilege of standing counsel to yours, in all ques- 
tions of Greek. We are, under favor, perpetual and 
14 



210 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

hereditary dragomans to you. So that if, by accident, 
you know the meaning of a Greek word, yet by courtesy 
to us, your counsel learned in that matter, you will 
always seem not to know it. 

A palimpsest, then, is a membrane or roll cleansed 
of its manuscript by reiterated successions. 

What was the reason that the Greeks and the Romans 
had not the advantage of printed books ? The answer 
will be, from ninety-nine persons in a hundred — Be- 
cause the mystery of printing was not then discovered. 
But this is altogether a mistake. The secret of printing 
must have been discovered many thousands of times 
before it was used, or could be used. The inventive 
powers of man are divine ; and also his stupidity is 
divine, as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the slow 
development of the sofa through successive generations 
of immortal dullness. It took centuries of blockheads to 
raise a joint stool into a chair ; and it required some- 
thing like a miracle of genius, in the estimate of elder 
generations, to reveal the possibility of lengthening a 
chair into a chaise-longue, or a sofa. Yes, these were 
inventions that cost mighty throes of intellectual power. 
But still, as respects printing, and admirable as is the 
stupidity of man, it was really not quite equal to the 
task of evading an object which stared him in the face 
with so broad a gaze. It did not require an Athenian 
intellect to read the main secret of printing in many 
scores of processes which the ordinary uses of life 
were daily repeating. To say nothing of analogous 
artifices amongst various mechanic artisans, all that is 
essential in printing must have been known to every 
nation that struck coins and medals. Not, therefore, 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 211 

any want of a printing art — that is, of an art for 
multiplying impressions — but the want of a cheap 
material for receiving such impressions, was the obstacle 
to an introduction of printed books even as early as 
Pisistratus. The ancients did apply printing to records 
of silver and gold ; to marble and many other substances 
cheaper than gold and silver, they did not, since each 
monument required a separate effort of inscription. 
Simply this defect it was of a cheap material for re- 
ceiving impresses, which froze in its very fountains the 
early resources of printing. 

Some twenty years ago, this view of the case was 
luminously expounded by Dr. Whately, the present 
archbishop of Dublin, and with the merit, I believe, of 
having first suggested it. Since, then, this theory has 
received indirect confirmation. Now, out of that 
original scarcity affecting all materials proper for 
durable books, which continued up to times compara- 
tively modern, grew the opening for palimpsests. Natu- 
rally, when once a roll of parchment or of vellum had 
done its office, by propagating through a series of gen- 
erations what once had possessed an interest for them, 
but which, under changes of opinion or of taste, had 
faded to their feelings or had become obsolete for their 
undertakings, the whole memlrana or vellum skin, the 
twofold product of human skill, costly material, and 
costly freight of thought, which it carried, drooped in 
value concurrently — supposing that each were inalien- 
ably associated to the other. Once it had been the 
impress of a human mind which stamped its value upon 
the vellum ; the vellum, though costly, had contributed 
but a secondary element of value to the total result. 



212 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

At length, however, this relation between the vehicle 
and its freight has gradually been undermined. The 
vellum, from having been the setting of the jewel, has 
risen at length to be the jewel itself; and the burden of 
thought, from having given the chief value to the 
vellum, has now become the chief obstacle to its value ; 
nay, has totally extinguished its value, unless it can be 
dissociated from the connection. Yet, if this unlinking 
can be effected, then, fast as the inscription upon the 
membrane is sinking into rubbish, the membrane itself 
is reviving in its separate importance ; and, from bear- 
ing a ministerial value, the vellum has come at last to 
absorb the whole value. 

Hence the importance for our ancestors that the 
separation should be effected. Hence it arose in the 
middle ages, as a considerable object for chemistry, to 
discharge the writing from the roll, and thus to make 
it available for a new succession of thoughts. The 
soil, if cleansed from what once had been hot-house 
plants, but now were held to be weeds, would be ready 
to receive a fresh and more appropriate crop. In that 
object the monkish chemist succeeded ; but after a 
fashion which seems almost incredible, — incredible not 
as regards the extent of their success, but as regards 
the delicacy of restraints under which it moved, — so 
equally adjusted was their success to the immediate 
interests of that period, and to the reversionary objects 
of our own. They did the thing ; but not so radically 
as to prevent us, their posterity, from undoing it. They 
expelled the writing sufficiently to leave a field for the 
new manuscript, and yet not sufficiently to make the 
traces of the elder manuscript irrecoverable for us. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 213 

Could magic, could Hermes Trismegistus, have done 
more ? What would you think, fair reader, of a 
problem such as this — to write a book which should be 
sense for your own generation, nonsense for the next, 
should revive into sense for the next after that, but 
again became nonsense for the fourth ; and so on by 
alternate successions, sinking into night or blazing into 
day, like the Sicilian river Arethusa, and the English 
river Mole ; or like the undulating motions of a flatten- 
ed stone which children cause to skim the breast of a 
river, now diving below the water, now grazing its 
surface, sinking heavily into darkness, rising buoyantly 
into light, through a long vista of alternations ? Such 
a problem, you say, is impossible. But really it is a 
problem not harder apparently than — to bid a genera- 
tion kill, but so that a subsequent generation may call 
back into life ; bury, but so that posterity may command 
to rise again. Yet that was what the rude chemistry of 
past ages effected when coming into combination with 
the reaction from the more refined chemistry of our 
own. Had they been better chemists, had we been 
worse, the mixed result, viz. that, dying for them, the 
flower should revive for us, could not have been 
effected. They did the thing proposed to them : they 
did it effectually, for they founded upon it all that was 
wanted : and yet ineffectually, since we unravelled 
their work ; effacing all above which they had super- 
scribed ; restoring all below which they had effaced. 

Here, for instance, is a parchment which contained 
some Grecian tragedy, the Agamemnon of iEschylus, 
or the Phcenissae of Euripides. This had possessed a 
value almost inappreciable in the eyes of accomplished 



214 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

scholars, continually growing rarer through generations. 
But four centuries are gone by since the destruction 
of the Western Empire. Christianity, with towering 
grandeurs of another class, has founded a different 
empire ; and some bigoted yet perhaps holy monk has 
washed away (as he persuades himself) the heathen's 
tragedy, replacing it with a monastic legend ; which 
legend is disfigured with fables in its incidents, and yet 
in a higher sense, is true, because interwoven with 
Christian morals and with the sublimest of Christian 
revelations. Three, four, five, centuries more find 
man still devout as ever ; but the language has become 
obsolete, and even for Christian devotion a new era has 
arisen, throwing it into the channel of crusading zeal 
or of chivalrous enthusiasm. The membrana is wanted 
now for a knightly romance — for " my Cid," or Cceur 
de Lion ; for Sir Tristrem, or Lybseus Disconus. In 
this way, by means of the imperfect chemistry known 
to the mediaeval period, the same roll has served as a 
conservatory for three separate generations of flowers 
and fruits, all perfectly different, and yet all specially 
adapted to the wants of the successive possessors. 
The Greek tragedy, the monkish legend, the knightly 
romance, each has ruled its own period. One harvest 
after another has been gathered into the garners of man 
through ages far apart. And the same hydraulic 
machinery has distributed, through the same marble 
fountains, water, milk, or wine, according to the habits 
and training of the generations that came to quench 
their thirst. 

Such were the achievements of rude monastic chem- 
istry. But the more elaborate chemistry of our own 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 215 

days has reversed all these motions of our simple an- 
cestors, which results in every stage that to them 
would have realized the most fantastic amongst the 
promises of thaumaturgy. Insolent vaunt of Paracel- 
sus, that he would restore the original rose or violet out 
of the ashes settling from its combustion — that is now 
rivalled in this modern achievement. The traces of 
each successive handwriting, regularly effaced, as had 
been imagined, have, in the inverse order, been regu- 
larly called back : the footsteps of the game pursued, 
wolf or stag, in each several chase, have been un- 
linked, and hunted back through all their doubles ; 
and, as the chorus of the Athenian stage unwove 
through the antistrophe every step that had been mys- 
tically woven through the strophe, so, by our modern 
conjurations of science, secrets of ages remote from 
each other have been exorcised* from the accumu- 
lated shadows of centuries. Chemistry, a witch as 
potent as the Erictho of Lucanto, (Pharsalia, lib. vi. 
or vii.,) has extorted by her torments, from the dust 
and ashes of forgotten centuries, the secrets of a life 
extinct for the general eye, but still glowing in the 
embers. Even the fable of the Phoenix, that secular 
bird, who propagated his solitary existence, and his 
solitary births, along the line of centuries, through 
eternal relays of funeral mists, is but a type of what 
we have done with Palimpsests. We have backed 

* Some readers may be apt to suppose, from all English experi- 
ence, that the word exorcise means properly banishment to the 
shades. Not so. Citation from the shades, or sometimes the 
torturing coercion of mystic adjurations, is more truly the primary 
sense. 



216 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

upon each phoenix in the long regressus, and forced 
him to expose his ancestral phoenix, sleeping in the 
ashes below his own ashes. Our good old forefathers 
would have been aghast at our sorceries ; and, if they 
speculated on the propriety of burning Dr. Faustus, 
us they would have burned by acclamation. Trial 
there would have been none ; and they could not 
otherwise have satisfied their horror of the brazen 
profligacy marking our modern magic, than by plough- 
ing up the houses of all who had been parties to it, and 
sowing the ground with salt. 

Fancy not, reader, that this tumult of images, illus- 
trative or allusive, moves under any impulse or pur- 
pose of mirth. It is but the coruscation of a restless 
understanding, often made ten times more so by irri- 
tation of the nerves, such as you will first learn to 
comprehend (its how and its why) some stage or two 
ahead. The image, the memorial, the record, which 
for me is derived from a palimpsest, as to one great 
fact in our human being, and which immediately I 
will show you, is but too repellent of laughter ; or, 
even if laughter had been possible, it would have been 
such laughter as oftentimes is thrown off from the 
fields of ocean,* laughter that hides, or that seems to 

* " Laughter from the fields of ocean." — Many readers will re- 
call, though, at the moment of writing, my own thoughts did not 
recall, the well known passage in the Prometheus — 

TtovTiojv te xvuarwv 

il Oh multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows ! " It is not clear 
whether iEschylus contemplated the laughter as addressing the ear 
or the eye. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. , 217 

evade mustering tumult ; foam-bells that weave gar- 
lands of phosphoric radiance for one moment round 
the eddies of gleaming abysses ; mimicries of earth- 
born flowers that for the eye raise phantoms of gaiety, 
as oftentimes for the ear they raise the echoes of fugi- 
tive laughter, mixing with the ravings and choir voices 
of an angry sea. 

What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is 
the human brain? Such a palimpsest is my brain ; such 
a palimpsest, O reader! is yours. Everlasting layers 
of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain 
softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury 
all that went before. And yet in reality not one has 
been extinguished. And if, in the vellum palimpsest, 
lying amongst the other diplomata of human archives 
or libraries, there is anything fantastic or which moves 
to laughter, as oftentimes there is in the grotesque 
collisions of those successive themes, having no natural 
connection, which by pure accident have consecutively 
occupied the roll, yet, in our own heaven-created 
palimpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain, 
there are not and cannot be such incoherencies. The 
fleeting accidents of a man's life and its external shows, 
may indeed be irrelate and incongruous ; but the 
organizing principles which fuse into harmony, and 
gather about fixed predetermined centres, whatever 
heterogeneous elements life may have accumulated 
from without, will not permit the grandeur of human 
unity greatly to be violated, or its ultimate repose to 
be troubled, in the retrospect from dying moments, or 
from other great convulsions. 

Such a convulsion is the struggle of gradual suffb- 



218 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

cation, as in drowning ; and, in the original Opium 
Confessions, I mentioned a case of that nature com- 
municated to me by a lady from her own childish 
experience. The lady is still living, though now of 
"unusually great age ; and I may mention, that amongst 
her faults never was numbered any levity of principle, 
or carelessness of the most scrupulous veracity ; but, 
on the contrary, such faults as arise from austerity, too 
harsh perhaps, and gloomy, indulgent neither to others 
nor herself. And, at the time of relating this incident, 
when already very old, she had become religious to 
asceticism. According to my present belief, she had 
completed her ninth year, when playing by the side of 
a solitary brook, she fell into one of its deepest pools. 
Eventually, but after what lapse of time nobody ever 
knew, she was saved from death by a farmer, who, 
riding in some distant lane, had seen her rise to the 
surface ; but not until she had descended within the 
abyss of death, and looked into its secrets, as far, per- 
haps, as ever human eye can have looked that had 
permission to return. At a certain stage of this descent, 
a blow seemed to strike her, phosphoric radiance 
sprang forth from her eyeballs ; and immediately a 
mighty theatre expanded within her brain. In a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, every act, every 
design of her past life lived again, arraying themselves 
not as a succession, but as parts of a co-existence. 
Such a light fell upon the whole path of her life back- 
wards into the shades of infancy, as the light perhaps 
which wrapt the destined apostle on his road to Damas- 
cus. Yet that light blinded for a season ; but hers 
poured celestial vision upon the brain, so that her con- 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 219 

sciousness became omnipresent at one moment to every 
feature in the infinite review. 

This anecdote was treated sceptically at the time 
by some critics. But besides that it has since been 
confirmed by other experience essentially the same," 
reported by other parties in the same circumstances 
who had never heard of each other, the true point for 
astonishment is not the simultaneity of arrangement 
under which the past events of life, though in fact 
successive, had formed their dread line of revelation. 
This was but a secondary phenomenon ; the deeper lay 
in the resurrection itself, and the possibility of resurrec- 
tion, for what had so long slept in the dust. A pall, 
deep as oblivion, had been thrown by life over every 
trace of these experiences ; and yet suddenly, at a 
silent command, at the signal of a blazing rocket sent 
up from the brain, the pall draws up, and the whole 
depths of the theatre are exposed. Here was the 
greater mystery : now this mystery is liable to no doubt ; 
for it is repeated, and ten thousand times repeated by 
opium, for those who are its martyrs. 

Yes, reader, countless are the mysterious hand- 
writings of grief or joy which have inscribed themselves 
successively upon the palimpsest of your brain ; and, 
like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or the 
undissolving snows on the Himalaya, or light falling 
upon light, the endless strata have covered up each 
other in forgetful ness. But by the hour of death, but 
by fever, but by the searchings of opium, all these can 
revive in strength. They are not dead, but sleeping. 
In the illustration imagined by myself, from the case of 
some individual palimpsest, the Grecian tragedy had 



220 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

seemed to be displaced, but was not displaced, by the 
monkish legend ; and the monkish legend had seemed 
to be displaced, but was not displaced by the knightly 
romance. In some potent convulsion of the system, 
all wheels back into its earliest elementary stage. The 
bewildering romance, light tarnished with darkness, the 
semi-fabulous legend, truth celestial mixed with human 
falsehoods, these fade even of themselves as life ad- 
vances. The romance has perished that the young 
man adored ; the legend has gone that deluded the 
boy ; but the deep, deep tragedies of infancy, as when 
the child's hands were unlinked for ever from his 
mother's neck, or his lips for ever from his sister's 
kisses, these remain lurking below all, and these lurk 
to the last. Alchemy there is none of passion or 
disease that can scorch away these immortal impresses ; 
and the dream which closed the preceding section, 
together with the succeeding dreams of this (which 
may be viewed as in the nature of choruses winding up 
the overture contained in Part I.), are but illustrations 
of this truth, such as every man probably will meet 
experimentally who passes through similar convulsions 
of dreaming or delirium from any similar or equal dis- 
turbance in his nature.* 

* This, it may be said, requires a corresponding' duration of ex- 
perience; but, as an argument for this mysterious power lurking in 
our nature, I may remind the reader of one phenomenon open to the 
notice of everybody, viz. the tendency of very aged persons to throw 
back and concentrate the light of their memory upon scenes of early 
childhood, as to which they recall many traces that had faded even 
to themselves in middle life, whilst they often forget altogether the 
whole intermediate stages of their experience. This shows that 
naturally, and without violent agencies, the human brain is by 
tendency a palimpsest. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 221 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. 

Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I 
knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana ? 
Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very 
much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for 
telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that per- 
formed for the new-born infant the earliest office of 
ennobling kindness — typical, by its mode, of that gran- 
deur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that 
benignity in powers invisible, which even in Pagan 
worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very 
moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first 
time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid 
on the ground. That might bear different interpreta- 
tions. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should 
grovel there for more than one instant, either the pater- 
nal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some 
near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, 
bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and pre- 
sented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in his 
heart, " Behold what is greater than yourselves ! ■" 
This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. 
And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face 
(except to me in dreams), but always acted by delega- 
tion, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the 
Italian verb) levare, to raise aloft. 

This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has 
arisen that some people have understood by Levana the 
tutelary power that controls the education of the nur- 
sery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a 



222 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

pre figurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, 
far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation 
attaching to the non-development of his powers. She 
therefore watches over human education. Now, the 
word edicco, with the penultimate short, was derived 
(by a process often exemplified in the crystallization of 
languages) from the word educo, with the penultimate 
long. Whatsoever educes or developes, educates. By 
the education of Levana, therefore, is meant — not the 
poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and gram 
mars, but by that mighty system of central forces hid 
den in the deep bosom of human life, which by passion 
by strife, by temptation, by the energies of resistance 
works for ever upon children — resting not day or night 
any more than the mighty wheel of day and night them 
selves, whose moments, like restless spokes, are glim 
mering* for ever as they revolve. 

If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana 
works, how profoundly must she reverence the agen- 
cies of grief! But you, reader! think — that children 



* "Glimmering-." — As I have never allowed myself to covet any 
man's ox nor his ass, nor anything that is his, still less would it be- 
come a philosopher to covet other people's images, or metaphors. 
Here, therefore, I restore to Mr. Wordsworth this fine image of the 
revolving wheel, and the glimmering spokes, as applied by him to 
the flying successions of day and night. I borrowed it for one mo- 
ment in order to point my own sentence ; which being done, the 
reader is witness that I now pay it back instantly by a note made 
for that sole purpose. On the same principle I often borrow their 
seals from young ladies, when closing my letters. Because there 
is sure to be some tender sentiment upon them about " memory," or 
"hope," or "roses," or "reunion;" and my correspondent must be 
a sad brute who is not touched by the eloquence of the seal, even if 
his taste is so bad that he remains deaf to mine. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 223 

generally are not liable to grief such as mine. There 
are two senses in the word generally — the sense of 
Euclid, where it means universally (or in the whole 
extent of the genus), and a foolish sense of this world 
where it means usually. Now I am far from saying 
that children universally are capable of grief like mine. 
But there are more than you ever heard of, who die of 
grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a common 
case. The rules of Eton require that a boy on the 
foundation should be there twelve years : he is super- 
annuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at 
six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at 
that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know. 
The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; 
but that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has 
killed more than ever have been counted amongst its 
martyrs. 

Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the 
powers that shake man's heart : therefore it is that she 
doats upon grief. " These ladies," said I softly to my- 
self, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was 
conversing, " these are the Sorrows ; and they are three 
in number, as the Graces are three, who dress man's 
life with beauty ; the Parcce are three, who weave the 
dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always 
with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic 
crimson and black ; the Furies are three, who visit 
with retributions called from the other side of the grave 
offences that walk upon this ; and at once even the 
Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or 
the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned 
creations. These are the Sorrows, all th*ee of whom I 



224 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

know." The last words I say now ; but in Oxford I 
said, " one of whom I know, and the others too surely 
I shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, I 
saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of my 
dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters. 
These sisters — by what name shall we call them ? 

If I say simply, " The Sorrows," there will be a 
chance of mistaking the term ; it might be understood 
of individual sorrow, separate cases of sorrow, — 
whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstrac- 
tions that incarnate themselves in all individual suffer- 
ings of man's heart ; and I wish to have these abstrac- 
tions presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed 
with human attributes of life, and with functions point- 
ing to flesh. Let us call them, therefore, Our Ladies 
of Sorrow. I know them thoroughly, and have walked 
in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one 
mysterious household ; and their paths are wide apart ; 
but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw 
often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about 
myself. Do they talk, then ? Oh, no ! Mighty phan- 
toms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They 
may utter voices through the organs of man when they 
dwell in human hearts, but amongst themselves is no 
voice nor sound ; eternal silence reigns in their king- 
doms. They spoke not as they talked with Levana ; 
they whispered not ; they sang not ; though oftentimes 
methought they might have sung; for I upon earth 
had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by 
harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, 
whose servants they are, they utter their pleasure, 
not by sounds' that perish, or by words that go astray, 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 225 

but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by 
pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, 
and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. 
They wheeled in mazes ; I spelled the steps. They 
telegraphed from afar ; I read the signals. They con- 
spired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my 
eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols ; mine 
are the words. 

What is it the sisters are ? What is it that they do ? 
Let me describe their form, and their presence ; if form 
it were that still fluctuated in its outline ; or presence it 
were that for ever advanced to the front, or for ever re- 
ceded amongst shades. 

The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 
?narum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and 
day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She 
stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation 
— Rachel weeping for her children, and refused to be 
comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the 
night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Inno- 
cents, and the little feet were stiffened for ever, which, 
heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead, 
woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not 
unmarked in heaven. 

Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy by 
turns ; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes chal- 
lenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her 
head. And I knew by childish memories that she could 
go abroad upon the winds, when she heard that sobbing 
of litanies or the thundering of organs, and when she 
beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister? 
the elder, it is that carries keys more than papal at her 
15 



226 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. 
She, to my know edge, sate all last summer by the bed- 
side of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly 
I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, 
with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of 
play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty 
roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send 
her a great reward. In the spring-time of the year, and 
whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her 
to himself. But her blind father mourns for ever over 
her ; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding 
hand is locked within his own ; and still he wakens to 
a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper 
darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sit- 
ting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber 
of the Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not 
less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and 
left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the 
power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides 
a ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men, 
sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges to the 
Nile, from Nile to Mississip i. And her, because she 
is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, 
let us honor with the title of " Madonna." 

The second sister is called Mater Suspirioivim, Our 
Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks 
abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And 
her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither 
sweet nor subtle ; no man could read their story ; they 
would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with 
wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her 
eyes ; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 227 

droops for ever, for ever fastens on the dust. She 
weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly 
at intervals. Her sister, Madonna, is oftentimes stormy 
and frantic ; raging in the highest against heaven ; and 
demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs 
never clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious 
aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the 
meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she 
may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is 
to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, 
but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is 
desolate, in ruined »cities, and when the sun has gone 
down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, 
of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediter- 
ranean galleys, of the English criminal in Norfolk 
island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in 
sweet far-off England, of the baffled penitent reverting 
his eye for ever upon a solitary grave, which to him 
seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody 
sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be avail- 
ing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, or 
towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave 
that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid 
reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our 
general mother, but for him a stepmother, as he points 
with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, 
but against him sealed and sequestered ; * — every 

* This, the reader will be aware, applies chiefly to the cotton and 
tobacco States of North America ; but not to them only : on which 
account I have not scrupled to figure the sun, which looks down 
upon slavery, as tropical; no matter if strictly within the tropics, or 
simply so near to them as lo produce a similar climate. 



228 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her 
head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the 
heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of 
holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly 
bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now 
burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst 
the ancients ; every nun defrauded of her unreturning 
May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will judge ; 
every captive in every dungecn ; all that are betrayed, 
and all that are rejected ; outcasts by traditionary law, 
and children of hereditary disgrace — all these walk 
with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key ; 
but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly 
amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant 
of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man 
she finds chapels of her own ; and even in glorious 
England there are some that, to the world, carry their 
heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have 
received her mark upon their foreheads. 

But the third sister, who is also the youngest ! 

Hush ! whisper, whilst we talk of her ! Her kingdom 
is not large, or else no flesh should live ; but within that 
kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that 
of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She 
droops not ; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden 
by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be 
hidden ; through the treble veil of crape which she 
wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests 
not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon 
of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read 
from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She 
also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 229 

suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power ; but narrow 
is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only 
those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved 
by central convulsions ; in whom the heart trembles 
and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from 
without and tempest from within. Madonna moves 
with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic 
grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealth- 
ily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable 
motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She car- 
ries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, 
she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter 
at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum — Our 
Lady of Darkness. 

These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime God- 
desses,* these were the Eumenides, or Gracious La- 
dies (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitia- 
tion) of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She 
spoke by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, 
she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs ; and what she 
spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in 
dreams) no man reads, was this : — 

" Lo ! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to 
my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. 
Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I 
stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did 
he become idolatrous ; and through me it was, by 

*" Sublime Goddesses." — The word otuvog is usually rendered 
venerable in dictionaries ; not a very flattering epithet for females. 
But by weighing a number of passages in which the word is used 
pointedly, I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to our idea 
of the sublime, as near as a Greek word could come. 



230 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and 
prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to 
him ; lovely was its darkness ; saintly its corruption. 
Him, this young idolator, I have seasoned for thee, 
dear gentle Sister of Sighs ! Do thou take him now 
to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. 
And thou," — turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she 
said — "wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do 
thou take him from her. See that thy sceptre lie 
heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tender- 
ness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frail- 
ties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the 
fountains of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. 
So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall 
he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that 
are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So 
shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fear- 
ful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. 
And so shall our commission be accomplished which 
from God we had — to plague his heart until we had 
unfolded the capacities of his spirit." * 

* The reader, who wishes at all to understand the course of these 
Confessions, ought not to pass over this dream-legend. There is no 
great wonder that a vision, which occupied my waking thoughts in 
those years, should re-appear in my dreams. It was in fact, a le- 
gend recurring in sleep, most of which I had myself silently written 
or sculptured in my daylight reveries. But its importance to the 
present Confessions is this, that it rehearses or prefigures their 
course. This first part belongs to Madonna. The third belongs 
to the " Mater Suspiriorum," and will be entitled The Pariah 
Worlds. The fourth, which terminates the work, belongs to the 
" Mater Tenebrarum," and will be entitled The Kingdom of Dark- 
ness. As to the second, it is an interpolation requisite to the effect 
of the others, and will be explained in its proper place. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 231 



THE APPARITION OF THE BROCKEN. 

Ascend with me on this dazzling Whitsunday the 
Brocken of North Germany. The dawn opened in 
cloudless beauty ; it is a dawn of Bridal June ; but, 
as the hours advance, her youngest sister April, that 
sometimes cares little for racing across both frontiers 
of May, frets the bridal lady's sunny temper with 
sallies of wheeling and careering showers, flying and 
pursuing, opening and closing, hiding and restoring. 
On such a morning, and reaching the summits of the 
forest mountain about sunrise, we shall have one 
chance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the 
Brocken.* Who and what is he ? He is a solitary 

* " Spectre of the Bracken.'' — This very striking' phenomena has 
been continually described by writers, both German and English, for 
the last fifty years. Many readers, however, will not have met 
with these descriptions ; and on their account I add a few words in. 
explanation, referring them for the best scientific comment on the 
case to Sir David Brewster's " Natural Magic." The spectre takes 
the shape of a human figure, or, if the visitors are more than one, 
then the spectres multiply ; they arrange themselves on the blue 
ground of the sky, or the dark ground of any clouds that may be in 
the right quarter, or perhaps they are strongly relieved against a 
curtain of rock, at a distance of some miles, and always exhibiting 
gigantic proportions. At first, from the distance and the colossal 
size, every spectator supposes the appearance to be quite indepen- 
dent of himself. But very soon he is surprised to observe his own 
motions and gestures mimicked ; and wakens to the conviction that 
the phantom is but a dilated reflection of himself. This Titan 
amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious, vanish- 
ing abruptly for reasons best known to himself, and more coy in 
coming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he 
is seen so seldom must be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions 
under which only the phenomenon can be manifested ; the sun must 



232 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

apparition, in the sense of loving solitude ; else he is 
not always solitary in his personal manifestations, but, 
on proper occasions, has been known to unmask a 
strength quite sufficient to alarm those who had been 
insulting him. 

Now, in order to test the nature of this mysterious 
apparition, we will try two or three experiments upon 
him. What we fear, and with some reason, is, that 
as he lived so many ages with foul Pagan sorcerers, 
and witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries, his 
heart may have been corrupted ; and that even now 
his faith may be wavering or impure. We will try. 

Make the sign of the cross, and observe whether he 
repeats it (as on Whitsunday* he surely ought to do.) 

be near to the horizon (which of itself implies a time of day incon- 
venient to a person starting from a station as distant as Elbinger- 
ode) ; the spectator must have his back to the sun ; and the air 
must contain some vapor, but partially distributed. Coleridge 
ascended the Brocken on the Whitsunday of 1799, with a party of 
English students from Goettingen, but failed to see the phantom; 
afterwards in England (and under the three same conditions) he saw 
a much rarer phenomenon, which he described in the following eight 
lines. I give them from a correct copy (the apostrophe in the 
beginning must be understood as addressed to an ideal conception) : 

" And art thou nothing ? Such thou art as when 
The woodman winding westward up the glen 
At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze 
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze. 
Sees full before him, gliding without tread, 
An image with a glory round its head ; 
This shade he worships for its golden hues, 
And makes (not knowing) that which he pursues." 

*" On Whitsunday." — It is singular, and perhaps owing to the 
temperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of sum- 
mer, that more appearances of the spectre have been witnessed on 
Whitsunday than on any other day. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 233 

Look ! he does repeat it ; but the driving showers per- 
plex the images, and that, perhaps, it is which gives 
him the air of one who acts reluctantly or evasively. 
Now, again, the sun shines more brightly, and the 
showers have swept off like squadrons of cavalry to 
the rear. We will try him again. 

Pluck an anemone, one of these many anemones 
which once was called the sorcerer's flower,* and bore 
a part perhaps in this horrid ritual of fear ; carry it to 
that stone which mimics the outline of a heathen altar, 
and once was called the sorcerer's altar;* then, bend- 
ing your knee, and raising your right hand to God, 
say, — " Father, which art in heaven, this lovely ane- 
mone, that once glorified the worship of fear, has 
travelled back into thy fold ; this altar, which once 
reeked with bloody rites to Cortho, has long been 
rebaptized into thy holy service. The darkness is 
gone ; the cruelty is gone which the darkness bred ; 
the moans have passed away which the victims ut- 
tered ; the cloud has vanished which once sate con- 
tinually upon their graves, cloud of protestation that 
ascended for ever to thy throne from the tears of the 
defenceless, and the anger of the just. And lo ! I thy 
servant, with this dark phantom, whom for one hour on 
this thy festival of Pentecost, I make my servant, render 
thee united worship in this thy recovered temple." 

* " The sorcerer's flower," and " the sorcerer's altar." — These are 
names still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken, and to an altar- 
shaped fragment of granite near one of the summits ; and it is not 
doubted that they both connect themselves through links of ancient 
tradition with the gloomy realities of Paganism, when the whole 
Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time the last asylum 
to a ferocious but perishing idolatry. 



234 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

Look now ! the apparition plucks an anemone, and 
places it on an altar ; he also bends his knee, he also 
raises his right hand to God. Dumb he is; but some- 
times the dumb serve God acceptably. Yet still it 
occurs to you, that perhaps on this high festival of the 
Christian Church, he may be overruled by supernatural 
influence into confession of his homage, having so 
often been made to bow and bend his knee at murder- 
ous rites. In a service of religion he may be timid. 
Let us try him, therefore, with an earthly passion, 
where he will have no bias either from favor or from 
fear. 

If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affection 
that was ineffable ; if once, when powerless to face such 
an enemy, you were summoned to fight with the tiger 
that couches within the separations of the grave ; in 
that case, after the example of Judsea (on the Roman 
coins) — sitting under her palm-tree to weep, but 
sitting with her head veiled — do you also veil your 
head. Many years are passed away since then ; and 
you were a little ignorant thing at that time, hardly 
above six years old ; or perhaps (if you durst tell all 
the truth) not quite so much. But your heart was 
deeper than the Danube ; and, as was your love, so was 
your grief. Many years are gone since that darkness 
settled on your head; many summers, many winters ; 
yet still its shadows wheel round upon you at intervals, 
like these April showers upon this glory of bridal June. 
Therefore now, on this dovelike morning of Pentecost, 
do you veil your head like Judsea in memory of that 
transcendent woe, and in testimony that, indeed, it sur- 
passed all utterance of words. Immediately you see 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 235 

that the apparition of the Brocken veils his head, after 
the model of Judaea weeping under her palm-tree, as if 
he also had a human heart, and that he also, in child- 
hood, having suffered an affliction which was ineffable, 
wished by these mute symbols to breathe a sigh towards 
heaven in memory of that affliction, and by way of 
record, though many a year after, that it was indeed 
unutterable by words. 

This trial is decisive. You are now satisfied that the 
apparation is but a reflex of yourself; and, in uttering 
your secret feelings to him, you make this phantom the 
dark symbolic mirror for reflection to the daylight what 
else must be hidden for ever. 

Such a relation does the Dark Interpreter, whom, 
immediately the reader will learn to know as an intruder 
into my dreams, bear to myown mind. He is origi- 
nally a mere reflex of my inner nature. But as the 
apparition of the Brocken sometimes is disturbed by 
storms or by driving showers, so as to dissemble his 
real origin, in like manner the Interpreter sometimes 
swerves out of my orbit, and mixes a little with alien 
natures. I do not always know him in these cases as 
my own parhelion. What he says, generally is but 
that which I have said in daylight, and in meditation 
deep enough to sculpture itself on my heart. But 
sometimes, as his face alters, his words alter ; and they 
do not always seem such as I have used, or could use. 
No man can account for all things that occur in dreams. 
Generally I believe this — that he is a faithful represen- 
tative of myself; but he also is at times subject to the 
action of the god Phantasus, who rules in dreams. 



236 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

Hailstone choruses * besides, and storms, enter my 
dreams. Hailstones and fire that run along the ground, 
sleet and blinding hurricanes, revelations of glory in- 
sufferable pursued by volleying darkness — these are 
powers able to disturb any features that originally were 
but shadow, and so send drifting the anchors of any 
vessel that rides upon deeps so treacherous as those of 
dreams. Understand, however, the Interpreter to bear 
generally the office of a tragic chorus at Athens. The 
Greek chorus is perhaps not quite understood by critics, 
any more than the Dark Interpreter by myself. But 
the leading function of both must be supposed this — not 
to tell you anything absolutely new, that was done by 
the actors in the drama; but to recall you to your own 
lurking thoughts — hidden for the moment or imper- 
fectly developed, and to place, before you, in immediate 
connection with groups vanishing too quickly for any 
effort of meditation on your own part, such commen- 
taries, prophetic or looking back, pointing the moral or 
deciphering the mystery, justifying Providence, or miti- 
gating the fierceness of anguish, as would or might 
have occurred to your own meditative heart — had only 
time been allowed for its motions. 

The interpreter is anchored and stationary in my 
dreams ; but great storms and driving mists cause him 
to fluctuate uncertainly, or even to retire altogether, 
like his gloomy counterpart, the shy Phantom of the 
Brocken — and to assume new features or strange fea- 

*" Hailstone choruses." — I need not tell any lover of Handel 
that his oratorio of " Israel in Egypt " contains a chorus familiarly 
known by this name. The words are — " And he gave them hail- 
stones for rain ; fire, mingled with hail, ran along upon the ground." 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. !237 

tures, as in dreams always there is a power not con- 
tented with reproduction, but which absolutely creates 
or transforms. This dark being the reader will see 
again in a further stage of my opium experience ; and I 
warn him that he will not always be found sitting inside 
my dreams, but at times outside, and in open daylight. 



FINALE TO PART I. SAVANNAH-LA-MAR. 

God smote Savannah-la-Mar, and in one night, by 
earthquake, removed her, with all her towers standing 
and population sleeping, from the steadfast foundations 
of the shore to the coral floors of ocean. And God 
said — "Pompeii did I bury and conceal from men 
through seventeen centuries : this city I will bury, but 
not conceal. She shall be a monument to men of my 
mysterious anger, set in azure light through genera- 
tions to come ; for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome 
of my tropic seas." This city, therefore, like a mighty 
galleon with all her apparel mounted, streamers flying, 
and tackling perfect, seems floating along the noiseless 
depths of ocean ; and oftentimes in glassy calms, 
through the translucid atmosphere of water that now 
stretches like an air-woven awning above the silent 
encampment, mariners from every clime look down 
into her courts and terraces, count her gates, and 
number the spires of her churches. She is one ample 
cemetery, and has been for many a year ; but in the 
mighty calms that brood for weeks over tropic latitudes, 
she fascinates the eye with a Fata-Morgana revelation, 



238 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

as of human life still subsisting in submarine asylums 
sacred from the storms that torment our upper air. 

Thither, lured by the loveliness of cerulean depths, 
by the peace of human dwellings privileged from 
molestation, by the gleam of marble altars sleeping 
in everlasting sanctity, oftentimes in dreams did I and 
the dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided 
us from her streets. We looked into the belfries, 
where the pendulous bells were waiting in vain for the 
summons which should awaken their marriage peals ; 
together we touched the mighty organ keys, that sang 
no jubilates for the ear of Heaven, that sang no re- 
quiems for the ear of human sorrow ; together we 
searched the silent nurseries, where the children were 
all asleep, and had been asleep through five genera- 
tions. " They are waiting for the heavenly dawn," 
whispered the Interpreter to himself: "and, when that 
comes, the bells and the organs will utter a jubilate 
repeated by the echoes of Paradise." Then, turning 
to me, he said, — " This is sad, this is piteous ; but 
less would not have sufficed for the purpose of God. 
Look here. Put into a Roman clepsydra one hundred 
drops of water ; let these run out as the sands in an 
hour-glass; every drop measuring the hundredth part 
of a second, so that each shall represent but the three- 
hundred-and-sixty-thousandth part of an hour. Now, 
count the drops as they race along ; and, when the 
fiftieth of the hundred is passing, behold ! forty- nine 
are not, because already they have perished ; and fifty 
are not, because they are yet to come. You see, 
therefore, how narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the 
true and actual present. Of that time which we call 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 239 

the present, hardly a hundredth part but belongs either 
to a past which has fled, or to a future which is still on 
the wing. It has perished, or it is not born. It was, 
or it is not. Yet even this approximation to the truth 
is infinitely false. For again subdivide that solitary 
drop, which only was found to represent the present, 
into a lower series of similar fractions, and the actual 
present which you arrest, measures now but the thirty- 
sixth-millionth of an hour ; and so by infinite declen- 
sions the true and very present, in which only we live 
and enjoy, will vanish into a mote of a mote, dis- 
tinguishable only by a heavenly vision. Therefore 
the present, which only man possesses, offers less 
capacity for his footing than the slenderest film that 
ever spider twisted from her womb. Therefore, also, 
even this incalculable shadow from the narrowest pen- 
cil of moonlight, is more transitory than geometry can 
measure, or thought of angel can overtake. The time 
which is, contracts into a mathematic point ; and even 
that point perishes a thousand times before we can 
utter its birth. All is finite in the present ; and even 
that finite is infinite in its velocity of flight towards 
death. But in God there is nothing finite ; but in God 
there is nothing transitory ; but in God there can be 
nothing that tends to death. Therefore, it follows, 
that for God there can be no present. The future is 
the present of God, and to the future it is that he sac- 
rifices the human present. Therefore it is that he 
works by earthquake. Therefore it is that he works 
by grief. Oh, deep is the ploughing of earthquake ! 
Oh, deep " [and his voice swelled like a sanctus rising 
from the choir of a cathedral], — " oh, deep is the 



240 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

ploughing of grief! But oftentimes less would not 
suffice for the agriculture of God. Upon a night of 
earthquake he builds a thousand years of pleasant 
habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an infant, 
he raises oftentimes from human intellects glorious 
vintages that could not else have been. Less than 
these fierce ploughshares would not have stirred the 
stubborn soil. The one is needed for earth, our planet 
— for earth itself as the dwelling-place of man ; but 
the other is needed yet oftener for God's mightiest 
instrument — yes" [and he looked solemnly at myself] 
" is needed for the mvsterious children of the earth ! " 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 241 



PART II. 



The Oxford visions, of which some have been given, 
were but anticipations necessary to illustrate the glimpse 
opened of childhood (as being its reaction). In this 
Second part, returning from that anticipation, I retrace 
an abstract of my boyish and youthful days so far as 
they furnished or exposed the germs of later experiences 
in worlds more shadowy. 

Upon me, as upon others scattered thinly by tens and 
twenties over every thousand years, fell too powerfully 
and too early the vision of life. The horror of life 
mixed itself already in earliest youth with the heavenly 
sweetness of life ; that grief, which one in a hundred 
has sensibility enough to gather from the sad retrospect 
of life in its closing stage, for me shed its dews as a 
prelibation upon the fountains of life whilst yet spark- 
ling to the morning sun. I saw from afar and from 
before what I was to see from behind. Is this the de- 
scription of an early youth passed in the shades of 
gloom ? No, but of a youth passed in the divinest 
happiness. And if the reader has (which so few have) 
the passion, without which there is no reading of the 
legend and superscription upon man's brow, if he is 
not (as most are) deafer than the grave to every deep 
note that sighs upwards from the Delphic caves of 
human life, he will know that the rapture of life (or 
16 



242 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

anything which by approach can merit that name) does 
not arise, unless as perfect music arises, music of Mozart 
or Beethoven, by the confluence of the mighty and ter- 
rific discords with the subtle concords. Not by contrast, 
or as reciprocal foils do these elements act, which is the 
feeble conception of many, but by union. They are 
the sexual forces in music : " male and female created 
he them ; " and these mighty antagonists do not put 
forth their hostilities by repulsion, but by deepest attrac- 
tion. 

As " in to-day already walks to-morrow," so in the 
past experience 1 of a youthful life may be seen dimly 
the future. The collisions with alien interests or hos- 
tile views, of a child, boy, or very young man, so insu- 
lated as each of these is sure to be, — those aspects of 
opposition which such a person can occupy, are limited 
by the exceedingly few and trivial lines of connection 
along which he is able to radiate any essential influence 
whatever upon the fortunes or happiness of others. 
Circumstances may magnify his importance for the 
moment ; but, after all, any cable which he carries out 
upon other vessels is easily slipped upon a feud arising. 
Far otherwise is the state of relations connecting an 
adult or responsible man with the circles around him 
as life advances. The network of these relations is a 
thousand times more intricate, the jarring of these 
intricate relations a thousand times more frequent, and 
the vibrations a thousand times harsher which these jar- 
rings diffuse. This truth is felt beforehand misgivingly 
and in troubled vision, by a young man who stands upon 
the threshold of manhood. One earliest instinct of fear 
and horror would darken his spirit if it could be revealed 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 243 

to itself and self-questioned at the moment of birth : a 
second instinct of the same nature would again pollute 
that tremulous mirror, if the moment were as punctually 
marked as physical birth is marked, which dismisses 
him finally upon the tides of absolute self-control. A 
dark ocean would seem the total expanse of life from 
the first ; but far darker and more appalling would seem 
that interior and second chamber of the ocean which 
called him away for ever from the direct accountability 
of others. Dreadful would be the morning which should 
say, "Be thou a human child incarnate;" but more 
dreadful the morning which should say, " Bear thou 
henceforth the sceptre of thy self-dominion through 
life, and the passion of life ! " Yes, dreadful would be 
both ; but without a basis of the dreadful there is no 
perfect rapture. It is a part through the sorrow of life, 
growing out of its events, that this basis of awe and 
solemn darkness slowly accumulates. That I have illus- 
trated. But, as life expands, it is more through the 
strife which besets us, strife from conflicting opinions, 
positions, passions, interests, that the funereal ground 
settles and deposits itself, which sends upward the dark 
lustrous brilliancy through the jewel of life, else reveal- 
ing a pale and superficial glitter. Either the human 
being must suffer and struggle as the price of a more 
searching vision, or his gaze must be shallow and with- 
out intellectual revelation. 

Through accident it was in part, and, where through 
no accident but my own nature, not through features of 
it at all painful to recollect, that constantly in early life 
(that is, from boyish days until eighteen, when by going 
to Oxford, practically I became my own master) 1 was 



244 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

engaged in duels of fierce continual struggle, with some 
person or body of persons, that sought, like the Roman 
retiarias, to throw a net of deadly coercion or constraint 
over the undoubted rights of my natural freedom. The 
steady rebellion upon my part in one half, was a mere 
human reaction of justifiable indignation ; but in the 
other half it was the struggle of a conscientious nature 

DO 

— disdaining to feel it as any mere right or discretional 
privilege — no, feeling it as the noblest of duties to 
resist, though it should be mortally, those that would 
have enslaved me, and to retort scorn upon those that 
would have put my head below their feet. Too much, 
even in later life, I have perceived in men that pass for 
good men, a disposition to degrade (and if possible to 
degrade through self-degradation) those in whom unwil- 
lingly they feel any weight of oppression to themselves, 
by commanding qualities of intellect or character. They 
respect you : they are compelled to do so, and they 
hate to do so. Next, therefore, they seek to throw off 
the sense off this oppression, and to take vengeance for 
it, by cooperating with any unhappy accidents in your 
life, to inflict a sense of humiliation upon you, and (if 
possible) to force you into becoming a consenting party 
to that humiliation. O, wherefore is it that those who 
presume to call themselves the " friends" of this man 
or that woman, are so often those, above all others, 
whom in the hour of death that man or woman is most 
likely to salute with the valediction — Would God I had 
never seen your face ? 

In citing one or two cases of these early struggles, I 
have chiefly in view the effect of these upon my subse- 
quent visions under the reign of opium. And this indul- 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 245 

gent reflection should accompany the mature reader 
through all such records of boyish inexperience. A 
good-tempered man, who is also acquainted with the 
world, will easily evade, without needing any artifice of 
servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an upright 
simplicity, jealous of its own rights, and unpractised in 
the science of worldly address, cannot always evade 
without some loss of self-respect. Suavity in this man- 
ner may, it is true, be reconciled with firmness in the 
matter ; but not easily by a young person who wants 
all the appropriate resources of knowledge, of adroit 
and guarded language, for making his good temper 
available. Men are protected from insult and wrong, 
not merely by their own skill, but also in the absence 
of any skill at all, by the general spirit of forbearance 
to which society has trained all those whom they are 
likely to meet. But boys meeting with no such for- 
bearance or training in other boys, must sometimes be 
thrown upon feuds in the ratio of their own firmness, 
much more than in the ratio of any natural proneness 
to quarrel. Such a subject, however, will be best illus- 
trated by a sketch or two of my own principal feuds. 

The first, but merely transient and playful, nor worth 
noticing at all, but for its subsequent resurrection under 
other and awful coloring in my dreams, grew out of an 
imaginary slight, as I viewed it, put upon me by one of 
my guardians. I had four guardians ; and the one of 
these who had the most knowledge and talent of the 
whole, a banker, living about a hundred miles from my 
home, had invited me when eleven years old to his 
house. His eldest daughter, perhaps a year younger 
than myself, wore at that time upon her very lovely 



246 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

face the most angelic expression of character and tem- 
per that I have almost ever seen. Naturally, I fell in 
love with her. It seems absurd to say so ; and the 
more so, because two children more absolutely innocent 
than we were cannot be imagined, neither of us having 
ever been at any school ; but the simple truth is, that in 
the most chivalrous sense I was in love with her. And 
the proof that I was so showed itself in three separate 
modes : I kissed her glove on any rare occasion when I 
found it lying on a table ; secondly, I looked out for 
some excuse to be jealous of her; and, thirdly, I did 
my very best to get up a quarrel. What I wanted the 
quarrel for was the luxury of a reconciliation ; a hill 
cannot be had, you know, without going to the expense 
of a valley. And though I hated the very thought of a 
moment's difference with so truly gentle a girl, yet how, 
but through such a purgatory, could one win the para- 
dise of her returning smiles ? All this, however, came 
to nothing ; and simply because she positively would 
not quarrel. And the jealousy fell through, because 
there was no decent subject for such a passion, unless 
it had settled upon an old music-master whom lunacy 
itself could not adopt as a rival. The quarrel mean- 
time, which never prospered with the daughter, silently 
kindled on my part towards the father. His offence was 
this. At dinner, I naturally placed myself by the side of 
M., and it gave me great pleasure to touch her hand at 
intervals. As M. was my cousin, though twice or even 
three times removed, I did not feel it taking too great 
a liberty in this little act of tenderness. No matter if 
three thousand times removed, I said, my cousin is my 
cousin ; nor had I very much designed to conceal the 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 247 

act ; or if so, rather on her account than my own. One 
evening, however, papa observed my manoeuvre. Did 
he seem displeased ? Not at all ; he even conde- 
scended to smile. But the next day he placed M. on 
the side opposite to myself. In one respect this was 
really an improvement, because it gave me a better 
view of my cousin's sweet countenance. But then 
there was the loss of the hand to be considered, and 
secondly there was the affront. It was clear that ven- 
geance must be had. Now there was but one thing in 
this world that I could do even decently ; but that I 
could do admirably. This was writing Latin hexame- 
ters. Juvenal, though it was not very much of him that 
I had then read, seemed to me a divine model. The 
inspiration of wrath spoke through him as through a 
Hebrew prophet. The same inspiration spoke now in 
me. Facit indignatio versum, said Juvenal. And it 
must be owned that Indignation has never made such 
good verses since as she did in that day. But still, 
even to me this agile passion proved a Muse of genial 
inspiration for a couple of paragraphs : and one line I 
will mention as worthy to have taken its place in 
Juvenal himself. I say this without scruple, having 
not a shadow of vanity, nor on the other hand a sha- 
dow of false modesty connected with such boyish 
accomplishments. The poem opened thus — 

" Te nimis austerum, sacrae qui foedera mensos 
Diruis, insector Satyros reboante flagello." 

But the line, which I insist upon as of Roman strength, 
was the closing one of the next sentence. The gen- 
eral effect of the sentiment was, that my clamorous 



248 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

wrath should make its way even into ears that were 

past hearing : 

" mea sceva querela 

Auribus insidet ceratis, auribus etsi 
Non audituris hyberna nocte procellam." 

The power, however, which inflated my verse, soon 
collapsed ; having been soothed from the very first, 
by finding, that except in this one instance at the din- 
ner-table, which probably had been viewed as an inde- 
corum, no further restraint of any kind whatever, was 
meditated upon my intercourse with M. Besides, it 
was too painful to lock up good verses in one's own 
solitary breast. Yet how could I shock the sweet 
filial heart of my cousin by a fierce lampoon or stylites 
against her father, had Latin even figured amongst her 
accomplishments ? Then it occurred to me that the 
verses might be shown to the father. But was there 
not something treacherous in gaining a man's appro- 
bation under a mask to a satire upon himself? Or 
would he have always understood me ? For one 
person a year after took the sacra menses (by which 
I had meant the sanctities of hospitality) to mean the 
sacramental table. And on consideration I began to 
suspect, that many people would pronounce myself the 
party who had violated the holy ties of hospitality, 
which are equally binding on guest as on host. Indo- 
lence, which sometimes comes in aid of good impulses 
as well as bad, favored these relenting thoughts; the 
society of M. did still more to wean me from further 
efforts of satire ; and, finally, my Latin poem re- 
mained a torso. But upon the whole my guardian 
had a narrow escape of descending to posterity in a 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 249 

disadvantageous light, had he rolled down to it through 
my hexameters. 

Here was a case of merely playful feud. But the 
same talent of Latin verses soon after connected me 
with a real feud that harassed my mind more than 
would be supposed, and precisely by this agency, viz., 
that it arrayed one set of feelings against another. Tt 
divided my mind as by domestic feud against itself. 
About a year after, returning from the visit to my 
guardian's, and when I must have been nearly complet- 
ing my twelfth year, I was sent to a great public school. 
Every man has reason to rejoice who enjoys so great 
an advantage. I condemned and do condemn the 
practice of sometimes sending out into such stormy 
exposures those who are as yet too young, too de- 
pendent on female gentleness, and endowed with sensi- 
bilities too exquisite. But at nine or ten the masculine 
energies of the character are beginning to be developed : 
or, if not, no discipline will better aid in their develop- 
ment than the bracing intercourse of a great English 
classical school. Even the selfish are forced into 
accommodating themselves to a public standard of 
generosity, and the effeminate into conforming to a rule 
of manliness. I was myself at two public schools ; 
and I think with gratitude of the benefit which I reaped 
from both ; as also I think with gratitude of the upright 
guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so 
effectually. But the small private schools which I 
witnessed for brief periods, containing thirty to forty 
boys, were models of ignoble manners as respected 
some part of the juniors, and of favoritism amongst 
the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public justice 



250 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

so broadly exemplified as in an English school. There 
is not in the universe such an areopagus for fair play 
and abhorrence of all crooked ways, as an English 
mob, or one of the English time-honored public 
schools. But my own first introduction to such an 
establishment was under peculiar and contradictory 
circumstances. When my " rating," or graduation in 
the school, was to be settled, naturally my altitude (to 
speak astronomically) was taken by the proficiency in 
Greek. But I could then barely construe books so 
easy as the Greek Testament and the Iliad. This was 
considered quite well enough for my age ; but still it 
caused me to be placed three steps below the highest 
rank in the school. Within one week, however, my 
talent for Latin verses, which had by this time gathered 
strength and expansion, became known. I was honor- 
ed as never was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. 
Not properly belonging to the flock of the head master, 
but to the leading section of the second, I was now 
weekly paraded for distinction at the supreme tribunal 
of the school ; out of which at first grew nothing but a 
sunshine of approbation delightful to my heart, still 
brooding upon solitude. Within six weeks this had 
changed. The approbation indeed continued, and the 
public testimony of it. Neither would there, in the 
ordinary course, have been any painful reaction from 
jealousy or fretful resistance to the soundness of my 
pretensions ; since it was sufficiently known to some of 
my school-fellows, that I, who had no male relatives but 
military men, and those, in India, could not have bene- 
fited by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily, the head 
master was at that time dissatisfied with some points in 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 251 

the progress of his head form ; and, as it soon appear- 
ed, was continually throwing in their teeth the brilliancy 
of my verses at twelve, by comparison with theirs at 
seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. I had observed him 
sometimes pointing to myself; and was perplexed at 
seeing this gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what 
French reporters call " sensation," in these young men, 
whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders, boys 
that were called young men, me*n that were reading 
Sophocles — (a name that carried with it the sound of 
something seraphic to my ears) — and who never had 
vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. 
The day was come, however, when all that would be 
changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the 
public playgrounds, and delivering a blow on my 
shoulder, which was not intended to hurt me, but as a 
mere formula of introduction, asked me " What the 
d — 1 I meant by bolting out of the course, and annoying 
other people in that manner ? Were other people to 
have no rest for me and my verses, which, after all, 
were horribly bad ? " There might have been some 
difficulty in returning an answer to this address, but 
none was required. I was briefly admonished to see 

that I wrote worse for the future, or else . At this 

aposiopesis I looked inquiringly at the speaker, and he 
filled up the chasm by saying that he would " annihi- 
late " me. Could any person fail to be aghast at such 
a demand ? I was to write worse than my own stand- 
ard, which, by his account of my verses, must be diffi- 
cult; and i. was to write worse than himself, which 
might be impossible. My feelings revolted, it may be 
supposed, against so arrogant a demand, unless it had 



252 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

been far otherwise expressed ; and on the next occasion 
for sending up verses, so far from attending to the 
orders issued, I double-shotted my guns ; double ap- 
plause descended on myself; but I remarked with some 
awe, though not repenting of what I had done, that 
double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my 
enemies. Amongst them loomed out in the distance 
my " annihilating " friend, who shook his huge fist at 
me, but with something like a grim smile about his 
eyes. He took an early opportunity of paying his 
respects to me — saying, " You little devil, do you call 
this writing your worst ? " No," I replied ; " I call it 
writing my best." The annihilator, as it turned out, 
was really a good-natured young man ; but he soon 
went off to Cambridge ; and with the rest, or some of 
them, I continued to wage war for nearly a year. And 
yet, for a word spoken with kindness, I would have 
resigned the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest 
of baubles. Undoubtedly praise sounded sweet in my 
ears also. But that was nothing by comparison with 
what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions 
that were connected with mortification to others. And, 
even if I could have got over that, the eternal feud 
fretted and tormented my nature. Love, that once in 
childhood had been so mere a necessity to me, that had 
long been a mere reflected ray from a departed sunset. 
But peace, and freedom from strife, if love were no 
longer possible, (as so rarely it is in this world,) was 
the absolute necessity of my heart. To contend with 
somebody was still my fate ; how to escape the con- 
tention I could not see ; and yet for itself, and the 
deadly passions into which it forced me, I hated and 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 253 

loathed it more than death. It added to the distraction 
and internal feud of my own mind, that I could not 
altogether condemn the upper boys. I was made a 
handle of humiliation to them. And in the meantime, 
if I had an advantage in one accomplishment, which is 
all a matter of accident, or peculiar taste and feeling, 
they, on the other hand, had a great advantage over 
me in the more elaborate difficulties of Greek, and of 
choral Greek poetry. I could not altogether wonder at 
their hatred of myself. Yet still, as they had chosen 
to adopt this mode of conflict with me, I did not feel 
that I had any choice but to resist. The contest was 
terminated for me by my removal from the school, in 
consequence of a very threatening illness affecting my 
head ; but it lasted nearly a year, and it did not close 
before several amongst my public enemies had become 
my private friends. They were much older, but they 
invited me to the houses of their friends, and showed 
me a respect which deeply affected me — this respect 
having more reference, apparently, to the firmness I 
had exhibited, than to the splendor of my verses. And, 
indeed, these had rather drooped from a natural acci- 
dent ; several persons of my own class had formed the 
practice of asking me to write verses for them. I 
could not refuse. But, as the subjects given out were 
the same for all of us, it was not possible to take so 
many crops off the ground without starving the quality 
of all. 

Two years and a half from this time, I was again at 
a public school of ancient foundation. Now I was 
myself one of the three who formed the highest class. 
Now I myself was familiar with Sophocles, who once 



254 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

had been so shadowy a name in my ear. But, strange 
to say, now in my sixteenth year, I cared nothing at 
all for the glory of Latin verse. All the business of 
school was light and trivial in my eyes. Costing me 
not an effort, it could not engage any part of my 
attention ; that was now swallowed up altogether by 
the literature of my native land. I still reverenced the 
Grecian drama, as always I must. But else I cared 
little then for classical pursuits. A deeper spell had 
mastered me ; and I lived only in those bowers where 
deeper passions spoke. 

Here, however, it was that began another and more 
important struggle. I was drawing near to seventeen, 
and, in a year after that, would arrive the usual time 
for going to Oxford. To Oxford my guardians made 
no objection ; and they readily agreed to make the 
allowance then universally regarded as the minimum 
for an Oxford student, viz., <£200 per annum. But 
they insisted, as a previous condition, that I should 
make a positive and definite choice of a profession. 
Now I was well aware, that, if I did make such a 
choice, no law existed, nor could any obligation be 
created through deeds or signature, by which I could 
finally be compelled into keeping my engagement. 
But this evasion did not suit me. Here, again, I felt 
indignantly that the principle of the attempt was unjust. 
The object was certainly to do me service by saving 
money, since, if I selected the bar as my profession, 
it was contended by some persons (misinformed, how 
ever), that not Oxford, but a special pleader's office, 
would be my proper destination ; but I cared not for 
arguments of that sort. Oxford I was determined to 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 255 

make my home ; and also to bear my future course 
utterly untrammeled by promises that I might repent. 
Soon came the catastrophe of this struggle. A little 
before my seventeenth birthday, I walked off one 
lovely summer morning to North Wales, rambled there 
for months, and, finally, under some obscure hopes of 
raising money on my personal security, I went up to 
London. Now I was in my eighteenth year, and, 
during this period it was that I passed through that 
trial of severe distress, of which I gave some account 
in my former Confessions. Having a motive, how- 
ever, for glancing backwards briefly at that period in 
the present series, I will do so at this point. 

I saw in one journal an insinuation that the incidents 
in the preliminary narrative were possibly without 
foundation. To such an expression of mere gratuitous 
malignity, as it happened to be supported by no one 
argument, except a remark, apparently absurd, but 
certainly false, I did not condescend to answer. In 
reality, the possibility had never occurred to me that 
any person of judgment would seriously suspect me of 
taking liberties with that part of the work, since, 
though no one of the parties concerned but myself 
stood in so central a position to the circumstances as 
to be acquainted with all of them, many were ac- 
quainted with each separate section of the memoir. 
Relays of witnesses might have been summoned to 
mount guard, as it were, upon the accuracy of each 
particular in the whole succession of incidents ; and 
some of these people had an interest, more or less 
strong, in exposing any deviation from the strictest 
letter of the truth, had it been in their power to do so. 



256 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

It is now twenty-two years since I saw the objection 
here alluded to; and in saying that I did not con- 
descend to notice it, the reader must not find any 
reason for taxing me with a blameable haughtiness. 
But every man is entitled to be haughty when his 
veracity is impeached ; and still more when it is im- 
peached by a dishonest objection, or, if not that, by an 
objection which argues a carelessness of attention al- 
most amounting to dishonesty, in a case where it was 
meant to sustain an imputation of falsehood. Let a 
man read carelessly if he will, but not where he is 
meaning to use his reading for a purpose of wounding 
another man's honor. Having thus, by twenty-two 
years' silence, sufficiently expressed my contempt for 
the slander,* I now feel myself at liberty to draw it into 
notice, for the sake, inter alia, of showing in how rash 
a spirit malignity often works. In the preliminary 
account of certain boyish adventures which had ex- 
posed me to suffering of a kind not commonly incident 
to persons in my station in life, and leaving behind a 
temptation to the use of opium under certain arrears 
of weakness, I had occasion to notice a disreputable 
attorney in London, who showed me some attentions, 



* Being constantly almost an absentee from London, and very 
often from other great cities, so as to command oftentimes no favor- 
able opportunities for overlooking the great mass of public journals, 
it is possible enough that other slanders of the same tenor may have 
existed. I speak of what met my own eye, or was accidentally 
reported to me ; but in fact all of us are exposed to this evil of 
calumnies lurking unseen, for no degree of energy, and no excess of 
disposable time would enable any man to exercise this sort of vigi- 
lant police over all journals. Better, therefore, tranquilly to leave 
all such malice to confound itself. 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 257 

partly on my own account as a boy of some expec- 
tations, but much more with the purpose of fastening 
his professional grappling-hooks upon the young Earl 

of A t, my former companion, and my present 

correspondent. This man's house was slightly de- 
scribed, and, with more minuteness, I had exposed 
some interesting traits in his household economy. A 
question, therefore, naturally arose in several people's 
curiosity — Where was this house situated ? and the 
more so because I had pointed a renewed attention to 
it by saying, that on that very evening (viz., the even- 
ing on which that particular page of the Confessions 
was written), I had visited the street, looked up at the 
windows, and, instead of the gloomy desolation reign- 
ing there when myself and a little girl were the sole 
nightly tenants, sleeping in fact (poor freezing crea- 
tures that we both were) on the floor of the attorney's 
law-chamber, and making a pillow out of his infernal 
parchments, I had seen with pleasure the evidences of 
comfort, respectability, and domestic animation, in the 
lights and stir prevailing through different stories of 
the house. Upon this the upright critic told his readers 
that I had described the house as standing in Oxford 
Street, and then appealed to their own knowledge of 
that street whether such a house could be so situated. 
Why not — he neglected to tell us. The houses at the 
east end of Oxford Street are certainly of too small an 
order to meet my account of the attorney's house ; but 
why should it be at the east end ? Oxford Street is a 
mile and a quarter long, and being built continuously 
on both sides, finds room for houses of many classes. 
Meantime it happens that, although the true house was 
17 



25S A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

most obscurely indicated, any house whatever in Ox- 
ford Street was most luminously excluded. In all the 
immensity of London there was but one single street 
that could be challenged by an attentive reader of the 
Confessions as peremptorily not the street of the attor- 
ney's house, and that one was Oxford Street ; for, in 
speaking of my own renewed acquaintance with the 
outside of this house, I used some expression implying 
that, in order to make such a visit of reconnoissance, 
I had turned aside from Oxford Street. The matter 
is a perfect trifle in itself, but it is no trifle in a 
question afFecting a writer's accuracy. If in a thing 
so absolutely impossible to be forgotten as the true 
situation of a house painfully memorable to a man's 
feelings, from being the scene of boyish distresses the 
most exquisite, nights passed in the misery of cold, 
and hunger preying upon him both night and day, in a 
degree which very many would not have survived, — 
he, when, retracing his schoolboy annals, could have 
shown indecision, even far more dreaded inaccuracy, 
in identifying the house, not one syllable after that, 
which he could have said on any other subject, 
would have won any confidence, or deserved any, 
from a judicious reader. I may now mention — the 
Herod being dead whose persecutions I had reason to 
fear — that the house in question stands in Greek 
Street on the west, and is the house on that side near- 
est to Soho Square, but without looking into the 
Square. This it was hardly safe to mention at the 
date of the published Confessions. It was my private 
opinion, indeed, that there were probably twenty-five 
chances to one in favor of my friend the attorney 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 259 

having been by that time hanged. But then this 
argued inversely ; one chance to twenty-five that my 
friend might be wnhanged, and knocking about the 
streets of London ; in which case it would have been 
a perfect god-send to him that here lay an opening (of 
my contrivance, not his) for requesting the opinion of 
a jury on the amount of solatium due to his wounded 
feelings in an action on the passage in the Confessions. 
To have indicated even the street would have been 
enough. Because there could surely be but one such 
Grecian in Greek Street, or but one that realized the 
other conditions of the unknown quantity. There was 
also a separate danger not absolutely so laughable as 
it sounds. Me there was little chance that the attor- 
ney should meet ; but my book he might easily have 
met (supposing always that the warrant of Sus. per 
coll. had not yet on Ms account travelled down to 
Newgate.) For he was literary ; admired literature ; 
and, as a lawyer, he wrote on some subjects fluently ; 
might he not publish his Confessions ? Or, which 
would be worse, a supplement to mine, printed so as 
exactly to match ? In which case I should have had 
the same affliction that Gibbon the historian dreaded 
so much, viz., that of seeing a refutation of himself, 
and his own answer to the refutation, all bound up in 
one and the same self-combating volume. Besides, he 
would have cross-examined me before the public in 
Old Bailey style ; no story, the most straightforward 
that ever was told, could be sure to stand that. And 
my readers might be left in a state of painful doubt, 
whether he might not, after all, have been a model of 
suffering innocence — I (to say the kindest thing pos- 



260 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

sible) plagued with the natural treacheries of a school- 
boy's memory. In taking leave of this case and the 
remembrances connected with it, let me say that 
although really believing in the probability of the 
attorney's having at least found his way to Australia, 
I had no satisfaction in thinking of that result. I knew 
my friend to be the very perfection of a scamp. And 
in the running account between us (I mean, in the 
ordinary sense, as to money), the balance could not be 
in his favor ; since I, on receiving a sum of money 
(considerable in the eyes of us both), had transferred 
pretty nearly the whole of it to him, for the purpose 
ostensibly held out to me (but of course a hoax) of 
purchasing certain law " stamps ; " for he was then 
pursuing a diplomatic correspondence with various 
Jews who lent money to young heirs, in some trifling 
proportion on my own insignificant account, but much 

more truly on the account of Lord A 1, my young 

friend. On the other side, he had given to me simply 
the reliques of his breakfast-table, which itself was 
hardly more than a relique. But in this he was not to 
blame. He could not give to me what he had not for 
himself, nor sometimes for the poor starving child 
whom I now suppose to have been his illegitimate 
daughter. So desperate was the running fight, yard- 
arm to yard-arm, which he maintained with creditors 
fierce as famine and hungry as the grave ; so deep 
also was his horror (I know not for which of the various 
reasons supposable) against falling into a prison, that 
he seldom ventured to sleep twice successively in the 
same house. That expense of itself must have pressed 
heavily in London, where you pay half a crown at least 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 261 

for a bed that would cost only a shilling in the pro- 
vinces. In the midst of his knaveries, and what were 
even more shocking to my remembrance, his confi- 
dential discoveries in his rambling conversations of 
knavish designs (not always pecuniary), there was a 
light of wandering misery in his eye at times, which 
affected me afterwards at intervals when I recalled it 
in the radiant happiness of nineteen, and amidst the 
solemn tranquillities of Oxford. That of itself was 
interesting ; the man was worse by far than he had 
been meant to be ; he had not the mind that reconciles 
itself to evil. Besides, he respected scholarship, which 
appeared by the deference he generally showed to 
myself, then about seventeen ; he had an interest in 
literature — that argues something good ; and was 
pleased at any time, or even cheerful, when I turned 
the conversation upon books ; nay, he seemed touched 
with emotion, when I quoted some sentiment noble and 
impassioned from one of the great poets, and would 
ask me to repeat it. He would have been a man of 
memorable energy, and for good purposes, had it not 
been for his agony of conflict with pecuniary embar- 
rassments. These probably had commenced in some 
fatal compliance with temptation arising out of funds 
confided to him by a client. Perhaps he had gained 
fifty guineas for a moment of necessity, and had sac- 
rificed for that trifle only the serenity and the comfort 
of a life. Feelings of relenting kindness, it was not 

in my nature to refuse in such a case ; and I wished 
t ****** 

But I never succeeded in tracing his steps through the 
wilderness of London until some years back, when I 



262 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

ascertained that he was dead. Generally speaking, 
the few people whom I have disliked in this world 
were nourishing people of good repute. Whereas the 
knaves whom I have known, one and all, and by no 
means few, I think of with pleasure and kindness. 

Heavens ! when I look back to the sufferings which 
I have witnessed or heard of, even from this one brief 
London experience, I say if life could throw open its 
long suits of chambers to our eyes from some station 
beforehand, if from some secret stand we could look by 
anticipation along its vast corridors, and aside into the 
recesses opening upon them from either hand, halls of 
tragedy or chambers of retribution, simply in that small 
wino 1 and no more of the great caravanserai which we 
ourselves shall haunt, simply in that narrow tract of 
time, and no more, where we ourselves shall range, 
and confining our gaze to those, and no others, for 
whom personally we shall be interested, what a recoil 
we should suffer of horror in our estimate of life ! 
What if those sudden catastrophes, or those inexpiable 
afflictions, which have already descended upon the 
people within my own knowledge, and almost below my 
own eyes, all of them now gone past, and some long 
past, had been thrown open before me as a secret 
exhibition when first I and they stood within the vesti- 
bule of morning hopes ; when the calamities themselves 
had hardly begun to gather in their elements of possi- 
bility, and when some of the parties to them were as 
yet no more than infants ! The past viewed not as the 
past, but by a spectator who steps back ten years 
deeper into the rear, in order that he may regard it as 
a future ; the calamity of 1840 contemplated from the 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 263 

station of 1830 — the doom that rang the knell of 
happiness viewed from a point of time when as yet it 
was neither feared nor would even have been intelligible 

— the name that killed in 1843, which in 1835 would 
have struck no vibration upon the heart — the portrait 
that on the day of her Majesty's coronation would have 
been admired by you with a pure disinterested admira- 
tion, but which if seen to-day would draw forth an 
involuntary groan — cases such as these are strangely 
moving for all who add deep thoughtfulness to deep 
sensibility. As the hastiest of improvisations, accept 

— fair reader (for you it is that will chiefly feel such 
an invocation of the past) — three or four illustrations 
from my own experience. 

Who is this distinguished looking young woman with 
her eyes drooping, and the shadow of a dreadful shock 
yet fresh upon every feature ? Who is the elderly lady 
with her eyes flashing fire ? Who is the downcast 
child of sixteen ? What is that torn paper lying at 
their feet ? Who is the writer ? Whom does the 
paper concern ? Ah ! if she, if the central figure in 
the group — twenty-two at the moment when she is 
revealed to us — could, on her happy birthday at sweet 
seventeen, have seen the image of herself five years 
onwards, just as we see it now, would she have prayed 
for life as for an absolute blessing ? or would she not 
have prayed to be taken from the evil to come — to be 
taken away one evening at least before this day's sun 
arose ? It is true, she still wears a look of gentle pride, 
and a relic of that noble smile which belongs to her 
that suffers an injury which many times over she would 
have died sooner than inflict. Womanly pride refuses 



264 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

itself before witnesses to the total prostration of the 
blow ; but, for all that, you may see that she longs to 
be left alone, and that her tears will flow without re- 
straint when she is so. This room is her pretty boudoir, 
in which, till to-night — poor thing ! — she has been 
glad and happy. There stands her miniature conser- 
vatory, and there expands her miniature library ; as we 
circumnavigators of literature are apt (you know) to 
regard all female libraries in the light of miniatures. 
None of these will ever rekindle a smile on her face ; 
and there, beyond, is her music, which only of all that 
she possesses, will now become dearer to her than ever ; 
but not, as once, to feed a self-mocked pensiveness, or 
to cheat a half visionary sadness. She will be sad 
indeed. But she is one of those that will suffer in 
silence. Nobody will ever detect her failing in any 
point of duty, or querulously seeking the support in 
others which she can find for herself in this solitary 
room. Droop she will not in the sight of men ; and, 
for all beyond, nobody has any concern with that, ex- 
cept God. You shall hear what becomes of her, 
before we take our departure ; but now let me tell you 
what has happened. In the main outline 1 am sure 
you guess already without aid of mine, for we leaden- 
eyed men, in such cases, see nothing by comparison 
with you our quick-witted sisters. That haughty-look- 
ing lady with the Roman cast of features, who must 
once have been strikingly handsome — an Agrippina, 
even yet, in a favorable presentation — is the younger 
lady's aunt. She, it is rumored, once sustained, in 
her younger days, some injury of that same cruel 
nature which has this day assailed her niece, and ever 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 265 

since she has worn an air of disdain, not altogether 
unsupported by real dignity, towards men. This aunt 
it was that tore the letter which lies upon the floor. It 
deserved to be torn ; and yet she that had the best right 
to do so would not have torn it. That letter was an 
elaborate attempt on the part of an accomplished 
young man to release himself from sacred engagements. 
What need was there to argue the case of such engage- 
ments ? Could it have been requisite with pure female 
dignity to plead anything, or do more than look an 
indisposition to fulfill them ? The aunt is now moving 
towards the door, which I am glad to see ; and she is 
followed by that pale timid girl of sixteen, a cousin, 
who feels the case profoundly, but is too young and shy 
to offer an intellectual sympathy. 

One only person in this world there is, who could 
to-night have been a supporting friend to our young 
sufferer, and that is her dear loving twin-sister, that for 
eighteen years read and wrote, thought and sang, slept 
and breathed, with the dividing-door open for ever 
between their bed-rooms, and never once a separation 
between their hearts ; but she is in a far distant land. 
Who else is there at her call ? Except God, nobody. 
Her aunt had somewhat sternly admonished her, though 
still with a relenting in her eye as she glanced aside 
at the expression in her niece's face, that she must 
'* call pride to her assistance." Ay, true ; but pride, 
though a strong ally in public, is apt in private to turn 
as treacherous as the worst of those against whom she 
is invoked. How could it be dreamed by a person of 
sense, that a brilliant young man of merits, various and 
eminent, in spite of his baseness, to whom, for nearly 



266 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

two years, this young woman had given her whole 
confiding love, might be dismissed from a heart like 
hers on the earliest summons of pride, simply because 
she herself had been dismissed from his, or seemed to 
have been dismissed, on a summons of mercenary 
calculation ? Look ! now that she is relieved from 
the weight of an unconfidential presence, she has sat 
for two hours with her head buried in her hands. At 
last she rises to look for something. A thought has 
struck her ; and, taking a little golden key which hangs 
by a chain within her bosom, she searches for some- 
thing locked up amongst her few jewels. What is it ! 
It is a Bible exquisitely illuminated, with a letter attach- 
ed, by some pretty silken artifice, to the blank leaves at 
the end. This letter is a beautiful record, wisely and 
pathetically composed, of maternal anxiety still burning 
strong in death, and yearning, when all objects beside 
were fast fading from her eyes, after one parting act of 
communion with the twin darlings of her heart. Both 
were thirteen years old, within a week or two, as on the 
night before her death they sat weeping by the bedside 
of their mother, and hanging on her lips, now for 
farewell whispers, and now for farewell kisses. They 
both knew that as her strength had permitted during 
the latter month of her life, she had thrown the last 
anguish of love in her beseeching heart into a letter of 
counsel to themselves. Through this, of which each 
sister had a copy, she trusted long to converse with her 
orphans. And the last promise which she had entreated 
on this evening from both, was — that in either of two 
contingencies they would review her counsels, and the 
passages to which she pointed their attention in the 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 267 

Scriptures ; namely, first, in the event of any calamity, 
that, for one sister or for both, should overspread their 
paths with total darkness ; and secondly, in the event 
of life flowing in too profound a stream of prosperity, 
so as to threaten them with an alienation of interest 
from all spiritual objects. She had not concealed that, 
of these two extreme cases, she would prefer for her 
own children the first. And now had that case arrived 
indeed, which she in spirit had desired to meet. Nine 
years ago, just as the silvery voice of a dial in the 
dying lady's bedroom was striking nine upon a summer 
evening, had the last visual ray streamed from her 
seeking eyes upon her orphan twins, after which, 
throughout, the night, she had slept away into heaven. 
Now again had come a summer evening memorable 
for unhappiness ; now again the daughter thought of 
those dying lights of love which streamed at sunset 
from the closing eyes of her mother; again, and just 
as she went back in thought to this image, the same, 
silvery voice of the dial sounded nine o'clock. Again 
she remembered her mother's dying request ; again her* 
own tear-hallowed promise — and with her heart in her 
mother's grave she now rose to fulfil it. Here, then, 
when this solemn recurrence to a testamentary counsel 
has ceased to be a mere office of duty towards the de- 
parted, having taken the shape of a consolation for 
herself, let us pause. 



Now, fair companion in this exploring voyage of 
inquest into hidden scenes, or forgotten scenes of hu- 
man life — perhaps it might be instructive to direct our 
glasses upon the false perfidious lover. It might. But 



2G8 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

do not let us do so. We might like him better, or pity 
him more, than either of us would desire. His name 
and memory have long since dropped out of every- 
body's thoughts. Of prosperity, and (what is more 
important) of internal peace, he is reputed to have had 
no gleam from the moment when he betrayed his faith, 
and in one day threw away the jewel of good con- 
science, and " a pearl richer than all his tribe." But, 
however that may be, it is certain that, finally, he be- 
came a wreck ; and of any hopeless wreck it is painful 
to talk — much more so, when through him others also 
became wrecks. 

Shall we, then, after an interval of nearly two years 
has passed over the young lady in the boudoir, look in 
again, upon her ? You hesitate, fair friend; and I 
myself hesitate. For in fact she also has become a 
wreck ; and it would grieve us both to see her altered. 
At the end of twenty one months she retains hardly a 
vestige of resemblance to the fine young woman we 
saw on that unhappy evening with her aunt and cousin. 
On consideration, therefore, let us do this. We will 
direct our glasses to her room, at a point of time about 
six weeks further on. Suppose this time gone ; sup- 
pose her now dressed for her grave, and placed in her 
coffin. The advantage of that is, that though no 
change can restore the ravages of the past, yet (as 
often is found to happen with young persons) the 
expression has revived from her girlish years. The 
child-like aspect has revolved, and settled back upon 
her features. The wasting away of the flesh is less 
apparent in the face ; and one might imagine that, in 
this sweet marble countenance, was seen the very 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 269 

same upon which, eleven years ago, her mother's 
darkening eyes had lingered to the last, until clouds 
had swallowed up the vision of her beloved twins. 
Yet, if that were in part a fancy, this, at least, is no 
fancy, that not only much of a childlike truth and 
simplicity has reinstated itself in the temple of her 
now reposing features, but also that tranquillity and 
perfect peace, such as are appropriate to eternity ; but 
which from the living countenance had taken their 
flight forever, on that memorable evening when we 
looked in upon the impassioned group, upon the tower- 
ing and denouncing aunt, the sympathizing but silent 
cousin, the poor blighted niece, and the wicked letter 
lying in fragments at their feet. 

Cloud, that hast revealed to us this young creature 
and her blighted hopes, close up again. And now, a 
few years later, not more than four or five, give back 
to us the latest arrears of the changes which thou con- 
cealest within thy draperies. Once more, " open se- 
same ! " and show us a third generation. Behold a 
lawn islanded with thickets. How perfect is the ver- 
dure ; how rich the blossoming shrubberies that screen 
with verdurous walls from the possibility of intrusion, 
whilst by their own wandering line of distribution they 
shape and umbrageously embay, what one might call 
lawny saloons and vestibules, sylvan galleries and 
closets. Some of these recesses, which unlink them- 
selves as fluently as snakes, and unexpectedly as the 
shyest nooks, watery cells, and crypts, amongst the 
shores of a forest-lake, being formed by the mere 
caprices and rambliijgs of the luxuriant shrubs, are so 
small and so quiet, that one might fancy them meant 



270 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 

for boudoirs. Here is one that, in a less fickle cli- 
mate, would make the loveliest of studies for a writer 
of breathings from some solitary heart, or of suspiria 
from some impassioned memory ! And opening from 
one angle of this embowered study, issues a little, 
narrow corridor, that, after almost wheeling back upon 
itself, in its playful mazes, finally widens into a little 
circular chamber ; out of which there is no exit (ex- 
cept back again by the entrance), small or great; so 
that, adjacent to his study, the writer would command 
how sweet a bed-room, permitting him to lie the sum- 
mer through, gazing all night long at the burning host 
of heaven. How silent that would be at the noon of 
summer nights, how grave-like in its quiet ! And yet 
need there be asked a stillness or a silence more pro- 
found than is felt at this present noon of day ? One 
reason for such peculiar repose, over and above the 
tranquil character of the day, and the distance of the 
place from high-roads, is the outer zone of woods, 
which almost on every quarter invests the shrubberies, 
swathing them (as one may express it), belting them, 
and overlooking them, from a varying distance of two 
and three furlongs, so as oftentimes to keep the winds 
at a distance. But, however caused and supported, 
the silence of these fanciful lawns and lawny chambers 
is oftentimes oppressive in the depths of summer to 
people unfamiliar with solitudes, either mountainous or 
sylvan ; and many would be apt to suppose that the 
villa, to which these pretty shrubberies form the chief 
dependencies, must be untenanted. But that is not the 
case. The house is inhabited, and by its own legal 
mistress, the proprietress of the whole domain; and not 



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 271 

at all a silent mistress, but as noisy as most little ladies 
of five years old, for that is her age. Now, and just 
as we are speaking, you may hear her little joyous 
clamor as she issues from the house. This way she 
comes, bounding like a fawn ; and soon she rushes 
into the little recess which I pointed out as a proper 
study for any man who should be weaving the deep 
harmonies of memorial suspiria. But I fancy that she 
will soon dispossess it of that character, for her sus- 
piria are not many at this stage of her life. Now she 
comes dancing into sight ; and you see that, if she 
keeps the promise of her infancy, she will be an in- 
teresting creature to the eye in after life. In other 
respects, also, she is an engaging child, — loving, natu- 
ral, and wild as any one of her neighbors for some 
miles round, viz., leverets, squirrels, and ring-doves. 
But what will surprise you most is, that, although a 
child of pure English blood, she speaks very little 
English ; but more Bengalee than perhaps you will 
find it convenient to construe. That is her Ayah, who 
comes up from behind at a pace so different from her 
youthful mistress's. But, if their paces are different, in 
other things they agree most cordially ; and dearly 
they love each other. In reality, the child has passed 
her whole life in the arms of this ayah. She remem- 
bers nothing elder than her ; eldest of things is the 
ayah in her eyes ; and, if the ayah should insist on her 
worshipping herself as the goddess Railroadina or 
Steamboatina, that made England and the sea and 
Bengal, it is certain that the little thing would do so, 
asking no question but this — whether kissing would 
do for worshipping. 



272 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS, ETC. 

Every evening at nine o'clock, as the ayah sits by 
the little creature lying awake in bed, the silvery 
tongue of a dial tolls the hour. Reader, you know 
who she is. She is the grand-daughter of her that 
faded away about sunset in gazing at her twin orphans. 
Her name is Grace. And she is the niece of that elder 
and once happy Grace, who spent so much of her hap- 
piness in this very room, but whom, in her utter deso- 
lation, we saw in the boudoir with the torn letter at her 
feet. She is the daughter of that other sister, wife to a 
military officer, who died abroad. Little Grace never 
saw her grandmama, nor her lovely aunt, that was her 
namesake, nor consciously her mama. She was born 
six months after the death of the elder Grace ; and her 
mother saw her only through the mists of mortal suffer- 
ing, which carried her off three weeks after the birth 
of her daughter. 

This view was taken several years ago ; and since 
then the younger Grace in her turn is under a cloud 
of affliction. But she is still under eighteen ; and of 
her there may be hopes. Seeing such things in so 
short a space of years, for the grandmother died at 
thirty-two, we say — Death we can face : but knowing, 
as some of us do, what is human life, which of us is it 
that without shuddering could (if consciously we were 
summoned) face the hour of birth ? 






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